Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of Using Natural Gas In Light-Duty Vehicle Fleet Of The United States On Its Energy Dependency And Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Nurullah Ayyilmaz

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Shale boom has changed the track of discussions on the future of the U.S. energy politics. A new opportunity emerged to meet domestic demand of the U.S. by using secure sources. Transportation accounts for a quarter of energy consumption in the U.S. Increasing the share of natural gas in the transport sector bolsters the U.S. energy security because of shifting from insecure sources (imported oil) to secure sources (shale gas reserves). Using natural gas instead of oil in light-duty vehicles (LDVs) contributes to the efforts of decreasing dependence on insecure sources and also decreases anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused …

Border Issues Demand Empathy: Speakers At Colby's Walker Symposium Consider Ways To Consider La Frontera, Charlie Eichacker

Colby Magazine

Mexican-American fiction writer Helena Maria Viramontes strives to help her readers understand the harder parts of the Chicano experience. Her first novel, Under the Feet of Jesus, for example, is about the dangerous lives of migrant farm workers in California.

A Concomitant Of Conflict And Consensus: Case Of A Chieftaincy Succession In Ghana, Kaderi Noagah Bukari

Peace and Conflict Studies

Ghana is often seen as peaceful, but is faced with many chieftaincy conflicts that result mainly from succession to the throne (skin or stool) for traditional political power. Ghana has more than 230 chieftaincy disputes dotted across many parts of the country. However, the Bulsa Traditional Area (Buluk) of Ghana has had a stable and resilient chieftaincy succession despite conflicts arising out of the selection of chiefs. In the selection of chiefs, the adoption of a voting system is said to lead to consensus based decision-making which is largely responsible for the non-violent nature of the Buluk chieftaincy …

Application Of Spatial And Descriptive Analysis Methods To Determine Relationship Between Hardware Subsidies And The Sanitation Marketplace, Danielle Devuyst

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sanitation marketing is an emerging approach of strengthening the local private sector to implement scalable and sustainable improved sanitation coverage in developing countries, specifically among the poor. It encourages the enhancement of sanitation market supply and demand by developing distribution infrastructure and stimulating consumer interest. Unlike interventions that provide hardware subsidies to initiate sanitation demand, financial support for sanitation marketing is used exclusively for the research and development of the market; this encourages the private sector to become independent and self-sufficient. Qualitative data suggests that while sanitation marketing projects have been successful at implementing replicable and sustainable sanitation coverage, they …

The Contact Hypothesis And The Diffusion Of Public Opinion Toward Undocumented Latino Immigrants In The United States, Sawyer Hackett

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

Negative and positive attitudes between population in-groups and out-groups are matured through a variety of experiences, chief among them being the extent of interaction between the two groups. The contact hypothesis observes the extent of interaction between in-groups and out-groups—distinguished by a particular demographic descriptor—and asserts that the extent of the two groups’ interaction is positively correlated with favorable attitudes directed toward the out-group. This research analyzes the potential effect that the undocumented Latino immigrant population has on the sentiments of the established native population. In addition to attitudes toward the undocumented Latino population, the importance that U.S. residents place …

"Chinese Military Space Power: U.S. Department Of Defense Annual Reports, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Following instructions received from the U.S. Congress in the 2000 National Defense Authorization Act, the Department of Defense prepared an annual report on Chinese military power. This report contains classified and unclassif ied editions. Documenting Chinese military space power developments was one of the provisions in this law’s authorizing language. This article will examine how Chinese military space power documents have been described by the Department of Defense during this report's existence through 2015 and detail how members of Congress and Congressional committee hearing witnesses reacted to these developments in Congressional hearing transcripts and in Congressional debate through Fall 2015.

Who, Why, And How?: Creating A Political Leader In China, Thomas Rebman

2016 Honors Council of the Illinois Region Papers

China holds a complex system of rules, regulations and policies that dictate how and who is eligible for leadership roles or government office. In reading the explicit policies that dictate the political system, there are examples of both direct election and promotions from within. The election rules show the principles of organization that have developed to organize the world's largest country into local and administrative areas. Looking at specific examples of individual politicians demonstrates a trend towards appointing wealthy economic players to positions reserved previously for Communist Party bureaucrats. Amidst a larger backdrop of cultural beliefs and social practices, the …

Neighborhoods Of Opportunity: Developing An Operational Definition For Planning And Policy Implementation, Kelly L. Patterson, Robert Mark Silverman, Li Yin, Laiyun Wu

Journal of Public Management & Social Policy

This article synthesizes existing literature to examine the emerging concept of neighborhoods of opportunity and places it in the context of past efforts to define neighborhood opportunity. Place-based and people-based approaches to urban revitalization and community development are linked to this concept. The place-based approach focuses on promoting inner-city revitalization in order to create neighborhoods of opportunity and the people-based approach focuses on connecting people to opportunities that already exist in the regions where they live. These approaches are examined in relation to how they influence emerging models for siting affordable housing in both distressed inner-cities and more opportunity rich …

Objecting (To) Infrastructure: Ecopolitics At The Ukrainian Ends Of The Danube, Tanya Richardson

Anthropology Faculty Publications

In southern Ukraine, two hydraulic infrastructures continue to exist despite environmentalist campaigns that have exposed them as fragile, broken or unprofitable. The Danube-Dnister Irrigation Project (DDIS), a Soviet mega-project that diverted water from the Danube and turned the Sasyk estuary into a reservoir, receives state funding despite a 1994 ban on its use for irrigation. The Bystre Shipping Canal, built in 2004 despite domestic and international opposition, is losing money but continues to operate. These cases exemplify the material politics of infrastructuring in which infrastructure is understood as an antagonistic process of assembling networks of humans and nonhumans rather than …

Editor's Introduction, Jr. Aguilar

Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints

No abstract provided.

Nakba Day: The Ephemera Of Martyrdom, Philip Hopper

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Nakba Commemoration Day for Palestinians is the counterpart of Israel’s Independence Day, which takes place one week earlier. These days respectively mark the forcible expulsions of Palestinians from the nascent state of Israel and the declaration of statehood by Israel. One tribe’s independence is another tribe’s disaster. One person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist. Parallel yet inverted narratives are everywhere in history and the present, from Manifest Destiny to the Ukraine, the Sudan, Northern Ireland and elsewhere today.

Governing Countries: A Theory Of Subnational Regime Variation, Kelly Mcmann, John Gerring, Matthew Maguire, Michael Coppedge, Staffan Lindberg

Faculty Publications, School of Management

Studies of a small number of countries have revealed that both democratic and non-democratic subnational governments can exist within a single country. However, these works have neither demonstrated how common subnational regime variation is nor explained why some countries are more prone to it. This paper does both. Using Varieties of Democracy subnational data for countries of the world from 1900 to 2012, we show that subnational regime variation exists throughout all regions, in both unitary and federal states, and in both the present and past. The paper also demonstrates theoretically and empirically how social heterogeneity and factors undermining the …

Metropolitan Governance Reform, Myron Orfield, Baris Dawes

Local Government Reconsidered

"The highly fragmented nature of the political systems that govern America’s metropolitan areas contributes mightily to all of these problems. The harms of political fragmentation are many and tightly interrelated. The excessive competition triggered by political fragmentation encourages local jurisdictions to pursue socially and economically undesirable policies. Cities steal malls and office parks from each other, fight tax incentive wars for auto malls, and zone out the poor for fiscal advantage in a process rife with haphazard planning and NIMBY biases. This disjointed status quo scatters new jobs like grapeshot at the furthest edge of development and in so doing …

Counterinsurgency In Yemen: Assessing Operations Decisive Storm, Restoring Hope, And Golden Arrow, Curtis Hanson

Capstone and Graduation Projects

This project provides a comprehensive assessment of the counter-insurgency (COIN) operations being conducted against the Huthis. Specifically, how effective the Arab coalition’s Operation Decisive Storm, Operation Restoring Hope, and Operation Golden Arrow have been in achieving their stated goals and common COIN principles. The 2011 International Security Assistance Forces’ (ISAF) assessment paradigm is used in evaluating four domains of each operation. The four domains are security, governance, socio-economics, and relations-partnerships. The chosen indicators provide enough specificity to create a comprehensive assessment on both operational and campaign levels. The assessments of each operation show that the socio-economic and governance domains need …

Turning Atrocity Prevention Inside-Out: Community-Based Approaches To Preventing, Protecting, And Recovering From Mass Violence, Bridget Moix

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Abstract: This article reviews recent research and evolving practice of community-based approaches to preventing and mitigating mass violence. It considers growing evidence that externally driven international interventions in response to violence are failing due to a lack of recognition and support for local actors, and increasing research into locally-led efforts, such as community protection strategies, early warning and response systems, interreligious peacebuilding, and post-atrocity trauma healing. Drawing from examples from a wide range of cases, including Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Colombia, and Sri Lanka, the article identifies key lessons for improving atrocity prevention policy and …

Predicting Genocide And Mass Atrocities, Ernesto Verdeja

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article examines several current risk assessment and early warning models to predict genocide and mass atrocities. Risk assessment (RA) concerns a country’s long­-term structural conditions (regime type, state-led discrimination, etc.) that determine overall risk for atrocities. Early warning (EW) focuses on short/midterm dynamics that can serve as triggers. The article evaluates contemporary RA and EW forecast modeling, and asks: How well can we predict mass atrocities and genocide? What are the strengths and limitations to current predictive modeling? Part I examines several quantitative (statistical) RA models and identifies several strengths and limitations in current research. Part II investigates a …

The Impossibility To Protect? Media Narratives And The Responsibility To Protect, Kjell Føllingstad Anderson, Ingjerd Veiden Brakstad

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The media plays an important role in communicating mass atrocities to audiences across the globe. This article critically examines how journalists’ framing of mass atrocities may contribute to public discourse on the responsibility to protect principle, in particular the perceived obligation to intervene in cases of mass atrocities. It will draw from a broader conceptual framework on bystander responses to mass atrocities and utilise evidence from the analysis of newspaper accounts of the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides. It will argue that, in some cases, media narratives may actually erode political will and encourage passivity in response to mass atrocities.

Interpreting China’S New Urban Spaces: State, Market, And Society In Action, Shenjing He, Lily Kong, George C. S. Lin

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Chinese urbanism has long historical roots and has profoundly influenced world civilizations. Yet, the Chinese city has not, until very recently, attracted sustained or intense global attention. In the post-reform era, especially after 1992, the scale and speed of China’s urbanization, and the intricacy of its dynamics and socio-spatial consequences have dwarfed those of other countries in the world. The latest reform era of urban China is characterized by a renewed and thriving urbanism, which manifests itself in the sheer scale of new urban space (re)production and the intricate interrelationships among the state, market, and society. The proliferation of new …

Through The Gateway: Marijuana Production, Governance, And The Drug War Détente, Michael Polson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the 1996 voter approval of medical marijuana laws in California, marijuana policy has become increasingly liberalized. Producers, however, have remained in the greyest of grey market zones. Federal anti-drug laws and supply-side tactics have intensively targeted them even as marijuana has become more licit. In this legally unstable environment, marijuana patient-cultivators and underground producers have articulated and asserted themselves politically and economically, particularly as the likelihood of full legalization has increased. This dissertation explores how producers navigated the nebulous zone between underground and medical markets. I argue that even as producers supplied marijuana to a formalizing, regulated medical industry …

The Dream Defaulted: Foreclosure, Crisis, And Hope In Baltimore, Maryland, And Detroit, Michigan, Heidi M. Rafferty-Reijm

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the United States, the late 2000s were a time of crisis that tested many urban decision-makers. The recession that started in 2007 was defined by a severe crash in the housing market and the proliferation of mortgage foreclosures across the country. Foreclosures occurred in urban, suburban, and rural communities, but had a particularly devastating impact on larger, older cities and their low and moderate-income neighborhoods. These cities had been dealing with economic and population decline for half a century. In many of their urban neighborhoods, foreclosures affected as many as one in four households and added yet another challenge …

Research In Brief - Can They Teach Each Other? : The Restructuring Of Higher Education And The Rise Of Undergraduate Student “Teachers” In Ontario, Jennifer Massey, Sean Field

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

Changes to public funding regimes, coupled with transformations in how universities are managed and measured have altered the methods for educating undergraduate students. The growing reliance on teaching fellows, teaching assistants, and increasingly undergraduate peer educators (administering Supplemental Instruction [SI] programs) is promoted as a means toachieve a greater “return on investment” in the delivery of postsecondary education. Neoliberal discourses legitimating this downloading of teaching labour suggest it offers a “win-win” solution to the “problem” of educating growing numbers of undergraduate students. It proposes universities can deliver the same curricula, and achieve the same “outcomes” (primarily measured through grades and …

Blog Consumption And International Relations, Michael A. Allen

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

International relations professors have sought to incorporate current events into their curriculum through various mechanisms. A traditional way to incorporate the news into the classroom is to have students either subscribe and read a particular newspaper, or watch the nightly news, and hold them responsible for that information. However, with the growing body of professional political science blogs available to the general public, we now have access to immediate current event updates framed through the lens of political science. This manuscript tests to see if having students regularly read professional political science blogs increases student achievement on multiple choice exams …

First In The Nation: New Hampshire's Changing Electorate, Kenneth M. Johnson, Dante J. Scala, Andrew Smith

Carsey Publications

In this brief, authors Ken Johnson, Dante Scala, and Andrew Smith discuss demographic forces that are reshaping the New Hampshire landscape. They report that the voting population of New Hampshire is among the most mobile in the United States. More than 30 percent of the potential voters are new to the state’s electoral process since 2008. These younger voters and recent migrants have the potential to change the political landscape of the state in the coming presidential primary and November election. The new young voters tend to be more liberal than their older contemporaries. These younger voters also identify less …

Promoting Corporate Intelligence In Italy To Improve Stability In The Middle East, Antonio Giuseppe Di Pietro

Capstone and Graduation Projects

Most national and international legislative instruments impose a duty to conduct appropriate due diligence when doing business, in order to hold each company accountable for the malicious activities of its partners. This project’s main argument is that formal due diligence is not enough when it comes to preventing corrupt business behavior, particularly when dealing with highly corrupt environments. Starting with an analysis of the Italian legislative efforts, this project demonstrates how the promotion of corporate intelligence into standard business practice could fill the gaps left by due diligence. Emphasis is placed upon the adoption of corporate intelligence among SMEs, given …

No. 22: The Return Of Food: Poverty And Urban Food Security In Zimbabwe After The Crisis, Godfrey Tawodzera, Liam Riley, Jonathan Crush

African Food Security Urban Network

The nadir of Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis in 2008 coincided with the implementation of a baseline household food security survey in Harare by AFSUN. This survey found that households in lowincome urban areas in Zimbabwe’s capital were far worse off in terms of all the food insecurity and poverty indicators than households in the other 10 Southern African cities surveyed by AFSUN. The central question addressed in this report is whether food security in Zimbabwe’s urban centres has improved. AFSUN conducted a follow-up survey in 2012 that allows for direct longitudinal comparisons of continuity and change. The status of …

No. 24: Mapping The Invisible: The Informal Food Economy Of Cape Town, South Africa, Jane Battersby, Maya Marshak, Ncedo Mngqibisa

African Food Security Urban Network

The informal food retail sector, which is diverse in terms of products traded as well as business models utilized, is an important component of urban food systems and plays a vital role in ensuring access to food by the urban poor. Yet, policy frameworks both to address food security and to govern the informal sector neglect informal retail in the food system and, as a result, the sector is poorly understood. This report attempts to identify the characteristics of the sector that impact on its ability to address the food needs of the neighbourhoods in which the businesses are located. …

Political Participation And Political Repression: Women In Saudi Arabia, Amalkhon Y. Azimova

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 2015 Saudi Arabian women were for the first time in history granted political space through electoral suffrage. To evaluate whether the new political opening for Saudi Arabian women has improved women's rights and equality in the Kingdom, I sought to conduct interviews to acquire their views and attitudes. In the process my encounters with Saudi Arabian women revealed their fear, cautiousness, and unwillingness to participate politically, which impelled me to discover the relationship between women's political participation and political repression. In the course of this research I learned that political repression inhibits women's political participation, and in Saudi Arabia …

Cuba After Fidel: Economic Reform, Political Liberalization And Foreign Policy (2006–2014), Arturo Lopez-Levy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation discussed Cuba's processes of economic reform and political liberalization, and their impact on Cuba's foreign policy's adaptation to the post-Cold War. The first part of the dissertation explains economic reform and political liberalization from the perspective of partial reform equilibrium as a result of the Cuban Communist Party's focus on domestic stability and international legitimacy. The second part of the dissertation focused on Cuba's foreign policy dynamics associated to the domestic reform, the changes in the international system after the end of the Cold War and the asymmetric conflict between Cuba and the United States.

Bilal, Bilal, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Bilal was 23 years old when he drowned in Greece. He was cheerful, intelligent, and full of energy.

He was a journalist in Afghanistan who received a death threat from the Taliban. His family decided that he should flee the country alone for survival since they couldn’t afford for the whole family to go.

He escaped from the camp in Moria by finding a hole in the fence. He outran the police, found a ship in port, and jumped on it as it was leaving. He later had 10 unsuccessful attempts to leave Greece for Germany. He was caught by …

Zurvan, Zurvan, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Zurvan and his family had a good life in Afghanistan. He worked as a clerk in a spice shop. After doing business with a foreign company, the Taliban threatened him with death. To escape this threat, he and his family escaped to Iran and hired a smuggler to get them to Turkey. From there, they traveled to Greece in an overloaded boat. They have been living in a camp in Greece, stuck in limbo, ever since. Zurvan feels hopeless, like everyone in the camp is being treated in an inhumane manner. He also feels guilty for bringing his children into …