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Full-Text Articles in Political Theory

Post-Obergefell V. Hodges: How Lgbt Contact Can Alter Public Lgbt Policy Positions In The U.S. And Arkansas, Briana Huett May 2022

Post-Obergefell V. Hodges: How Lgbt Contact Can Alter Public Lgbt Policy Positions In The U.S. And Arkansas, Briana Huett

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Contact Theory (CT) of attitudinal change has utilized to understand perceptions of minority-group members and the policies that surround them since the 1950s. It has further been used to specifically examine how we form our opinions of LGBT-identifying individuals, the LGBT community, and LGBT policies more generally. However, further evidence is still needed from the CT literature surrounding how this form of contact interacts with individuals’ social identities to determine and alter their LGBT policy positions, how the level of contact with LGBT persons might have differing effects on these positions, and whether LGBT contact holds the same effects …


The Double Edge: Contradictory Functions Of Civil Society Organizations In The Tunisian Democratic Process, Dhia Ben Ali May 2021

The Double Edge: Contradictory Functions Of Civil Society Organizations In The Tunisian Democratic Process, Dhia Ben Ali

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Democratic transition,” the act of becoming democratic, and “democratic consolidation,” the subsequent actions that solidify the achievement of becoming democratic, are two separate processes that go hand in hand. While several Arab Spring nations overthrew their dictators, fewer underwent a democratic transition, and only one – Tunisia – achieved democratic consolidation (Bouchlaghem and Thepaut, 2019; Sadiki, 2019; Gianni, 2019). Tunisia constitutes the sole Arab Spring country to have: 1) created and adopted a new constitution; 2) formed and institutionalized political parties that peacefully share power; and 3) achieved multiple rounds of free and fair elections (Al-Anani, 2014; Yerkes, 2019). Scholarly …


Applications Of Cultural Theory And Empirical Analysis Of Sustainable Energy Policy Preferences In Arkansas, John Henry Kester Iii Dec 2015

Applications Of Cultural Theory And Empirical Analysis Of Sustainable Energy Policy Preferences In Arkansas, John Henry Kester Iii

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The local policy arena is ripe for research on policy elite decisionmaking because where policy diffusion is concerned, previous studies focus on state-to-state and city-to-city dynamics. Therefore, there is a significant opportunity to expand understanding about the adoption of policies and policy diffusion at the local level. Identification of individual level determinants that signify policy adoption is a cornerstone to fostering this knowledge. This study examines such preference indicators found among policy elites in select Arkansas cities. For this research, the primary theoretical perspective for evaluating individual determinants is cultural theory, which has shown strong correlation to individual policy preference …


Interest Group Scorecards And Legislative Satisfaction: Using Ratings To Explore The Private Bias In Public Policy, Daniel E. Chand Aug 2013

Interest Group Scorecards And Legislative Satisfaction: Using Ratings To Explore The Private Bias In Public Policy, Daniel E. Chand

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite their importance to our system, the study of interest groups has produced few concrete findings compared to other actors such as administrative agencies and political parties in the policymaking process. The absence of generalizable findings is partly explained by the unpopularity of the topic, but is primarily due to a deficiency of easily accessible data and lack of agreement over how to operationalize important concepts. In the following dissertation, I employ interest group "scorecards" (ratings of members of Congress) as an approach to examining interest groups in a generalizable manner. Specifically, I use scorecards to test the pluralist assumptions …


Reflection Moderation In The U.S. Senate On Economics, Social, And Foreign Policy, Brian E. Russell Aug 1998

Reflection Moderation In The U.S. Senate On Economics, Social, And Foreign Policy, Brian E. Russell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates reelection moderation in the U.S. Senate on economic, social, and foreign policy between 1983 and 1994. I test 3 hypotheses based on the assumption that senators moderate their voting records when seeking reelection to appeal to the median voter. My hypotheses are: (1) Both groups of senators will moderate on economic policy, but a larger percentage of Democrats will moderate than Republicans (2) A majority of Democratic senators will moderate on social policy, but only a small percentage of Republicans will moderate. (3) Less than a majority of both groups of senators will moderate on foreign policy, …


Contributing Factors To The Existence Of Right-To-Work Laws In Two Southern States, Timothy A. Bledsoe May 1978

Contributing Factors To The Existence Of Right-To-Work Laws In Two Southern States, Timothy A. Bledsoe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Providing explanations of why governments or political systems adopt the public policies they do is and has been a goal of political science for some time. The purpose of this paper is to investigate one specific policy out-come -- so called "right-to- work" laws -- in the context of the political environment provided by two Southern states: Arkansas and Louisiana.1 Specifically, an effort will be made to determine what environmental factors have tended to encourage the adoption of right-to-work laws and how the proponents and opponents of such laws have attempted to influence their passage or repeal.