Digital Commons Network^™

American Spirits: The Impact Of Social Setting On Voter Turnout, Annika Lindberg

Scripps Senior Theses

Low voter turnout has characterized American elections for the past century, raising ongoing concerns about democratic representation. Although scholars agree that low turnout is problematic, they differ on which factors most strongly influence participation. This thesis examined whether creating a celebratory, patriotic Election Day environment modeled after Fourth of July festivities increased voter engagement.

Using two complementary methods, the research evaluated the effects of celebratory Election Day settings on voting behavior. Study 1 used a partial field case study, comparing turnout after Election Day parties held for three student organizations at a small California liberal arts college with turnout from …

Shifting Tide: A Comparative Analysis Of News Coverage Of The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict, Devon Skufca, Gloria S. Vaquera

2026 Faculty Bibliography

Internationally, the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine has been widely reported for years in mass media. Most recently, the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, again focused international attention on this region. Examining how this conflict has been reported starting October 2023 and for the subsequent eight months provides an opportunity to examine the framing of these events. This comparative study examines two newspapers of record, one from the United States (a known ally of Israel) and the other from Ireland, often seen as more sympathetic toward Palestinian statehood. A total of 179 articles from the New York …

An Engine, Not A Vessel: Place, Politics, And Health In The United States, Philip B. Rocco

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Social scientists often treat places as containers for social and economic phenomena that shape health outcomes. Yet this analytic practice conceals more than it reveals. Local governments in the United States should be understood as engines of both health promotion and stratification. As the contributions to this symposium suggest, governments not only occupy a formal place in the U.S. public health system, their decisions on everything from housing to transportation infrastructure can also have profound impacts on health outcomes. Local political economies likewise renegotiate the parameters of acceptable health interventions, public understandings of health disparities, and the status of population …

Vacuum Wars: The Belt & Road Initiative’S Rise In The Arab League, Corabeth R. Pierce

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The world has shifted and changed in the last decade, resulting in a new world order. The Middle East and North Africa region houses the Arab League, which has drawn the attention of several states throughout the world. China has shown particular interest in the region since its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was first created in 2013. The BRI demonstrates how China has become more involved in the region and that these Arab states are more interested in what China has to offer compared to other countries. With the United States developing more nationalist policies, the European Union facing …

The Rise Of Right-Wing Populism Among Young Men, Oliver Lorgen

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Since the end of World War II, young people of Western Liberal Democracies have generally leaned left, holding views of reform, social progression, and policies that lead to a general increase in quality of life through social programs (Universal healthcare, food programs, public housing, etc). With unprecedented economic security, many people, especially younger ones, refocused their priorities away from ones of survival through strict authority and toward left-liberal positions of individual autonomy, civil rights, and redistribution of wealth and power. This trend continued throughout the 20th century. However, as instability begins to plague Western Liberal Democracies in the 21st century, …

The Judicial Containment Of Adivasi Rights Across India's Mineral Belt, Sajni S. Sheth-Voss

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines how Adivasi resistance to mining-induced dispossession across India’s mineral belt is increasingly channeled into the judiciary, arguing that this shift functions as a mechanism of containment rather than a pathway to justice. Despite a robust legal framework designed to protect Adivasi land and consent rights, systematic non-enforcement and political closure have hollowed out policy and electoral channels, pushing communities into litigation as a last resort. Drawing on scholarship in political economy, legal studies, and political ecology, alongside primary sources including court documents and activist statements, this study follows how disputes move across institutions and are ultimately reshaped …

The Decline Of Access Donors In Funding National Nominating Conventions, Karen Sebold, Eric Heberlig, Robert G. Boatright

Political Science

The US major-party presidential nominating conventions are an essential platform for a political party’s branding and messaging for upcoming presidential and congressional elections. The conventions also can provide revenue and media attention to their host cities and, consequently, convention fundraising has grown substantially in recent decades. Convention fundraising rules were changed in 2014, tripling the limit for contributions to a party’s campaign funds and removing limits on contributions to host-city committees. Although we do not expect these changes to affect individual donors, we expect corporations, banks, and labor unions to have taken advantage of these new rules. Elections since 2014, …

Thailand’S Alignment Strategy Amidst The Us-China Rivalry : A Role Theory Perspective, Wen Chou Han

Journal of Social Sciences

This paper seeks to analyze how Thailand, as a middle power, navigates its alignment choices amid an intensifying US-China rivalry in the Asia-Pacific region through the lens of role theory. This paper also proposes several original mechanisms to operationalize the role theory in the analysis of Thailand’s strategy. To this end, Thailand’s foreign policy from the past decade (2012 to mid-2025) will be reviewed. The central argument is that Thailand is adopting a “soft hedging” strategy marked by opportunism and driven by its key goal of development, but is, at the same time, complicated by domestic political dysfunction (“fragmented centralism”). …

การสื่อสารทางการเมืองของนายกเทศมนตรีในการบริหารจัดการอุทกภัย : กรณีศึกษาเทศบาลนครยะลา, ปุญญวันต์ จิตประคอง

Journal of Social Sciences

บทความวิจัยนี้มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อศึกษารูปแบบและกลยุทธ์การสื่อสารทางการเมืองของนายกเทศมนตรีนครยะลาในการบริหารจัดการอุทกภัย และวิเคราะห์ประสิทธิผลของกลยุทธ์การสื่อสารทางการเมืองที่มีต่อการสร้างการมีส่วนร่วมของประชาชน โดยใช้วิธีการวิจัยเชิงคุณภาพแบบกรณีศึกษา และเก็บรวบรวมข้อมูลผ่านการสัมภาษณ์เชิงลึกผู้ให้ข้อมูลหลัก 8 คน ประกอบด้วย นายกเทศมนตรีนครยะลา ปลัดเทศบาลนครยะลา หัวหน้าฝ่ายป้องกันและบรรเทาสาธารณภัยเทศบาลนครยะลา เจ้าหน้าที่ฝ่ายป้องกันและบรรเทาสาธารณภัยเทศบาลนครยะลา ผู้รับบริการและผู้มีส่วนได้ส่วนเสียในระดับชุมชนและการวิเคราะห์เอกสารที่เกี่ยวข้อง ได้แก่ แผนการบริหารจัดการอุทกภัย รายงานผลการดำเนินงาน และข้อมูลจากสื่อสังคมออนไลน์ จากนั้นวิเคราะห์ข้อมูลด้วยการวิเคราะห์เนื้อหาโดยใช้กรอบทฤษฎีการสื่อสารในภาวะวิกฤต แนวคิดการสื่อสารทางการเมือง และแนวคิดการสร้างความยืดหยุ่นของเมือง ผลการศึกษาพบรูปแบบการสื่อสาร 5 ลักษณะ คือ การสื่อสารหลายช่องทางแบบบูรณาการ (ดิจิทัล ช่องทางดั้งเดิม และนวัตกรรม IoT) การสื่อสารแบบเรียลไทม์ 3 ระยะ มีการแจ้งล่วงหน้า 8 ชั่วโมง การจัดวางตำแหน่งของเทศบาลเป็นศูนย์กลางข้อมูลที่สามารถชี้แจงต่อสาธารณะ และมีการเปิดเผยข้อมูล ผ่านกลไกต่าง ๆ ประกอบด้วย สภากาแฟ การดูงาน และการประสานผู้ช่วยชุมชน 44 คน และการสร้างเครือข่าย Win-Win กับองค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่น 20 แห่ง ส่งผลให้เกิดผลสัมฤทธิ์ที่สำคัญ 4 ด้าน ประกอบด้วย การเพิ่มการมีส่วนร่วม (ตัวแทนครัวเรือน 10,000 จาก 25,000 ครัวเรือน อาสาสมัคร 176 คน) การสร้างความไว้วางใจที่สั่งสม 20-21 ปี การเพิ่มประสิทธิภาพการรับมือภัยพิบัติ (ตอบสนองรวดเร็วกว่าหน่วยงานอื่น) และการพัฒนานวัตกรรมอย่างต่อเนื่อง ทั้งนี้ องค์ประกอบของความสำเร็จเกิดขึ้นมาจากความโปร่งใสและการแสดงให้เห็นการทำงานจริง การเปิดโอกาสให้ประชาชนมีส่วนในการตัดสินใจ การคัดเลือกตัวแทนแต่ละหมู่บ้าน การแก้ปัญหาข้ามเขตตามหลักการ Win-Win และบารมีของผู้บริหารที่สั่งสมมา ซึ่งคุณลักษณะดังกล่าวสามารถนำไปประยุกต์ใช้ในการพัฒนากระบวนการบริหารจัดการภัยพิบัติในพื้นที่อื่น ๆ ได้อย่างมีประสิทธิภาพ

สิทธิการป้องกันตนเองร่วมของญี่ปุ่นในยุทธศาสตร์อินโด-แปซิฟิก : มุมมองยุทธศาสตร์การกระจายความเสี่ยงแบบการถ่วงดุลทางอ้อม, พรพิทักษ์ นิ่มอนงค์

Journal of Social Sciences

นายกรัฐมนตรีชินโซ อาเบะ ให้เหตุผลการยอมรับสิทธิการป้องกันตนเองร่วม (Collective Self-Defense : CSD) ว่า ภัยคุกคามต่อญี่ปุ่นกำลังทวีความรุนแรงรอบด้าน ทั้งขีปนาวุธจากเกาหลีเหนือ ข้อพิพาททางดินแดน รวมไปถึงการขยายอิทธิพลของจีนที่อาจเข้าแทนที่สหรัฐอเมริกาในภูมิภาค หากสถานะเดิม (Status quo) เปลี่ยนไป ญี่ปุ่นภายใต้รัฐธรรมนูญสันติภาพจะไม่อาจต่อสู้ได้เพียงลำพัง บทความชิ้นนี้ต้องการศึกษาพลวัตการใช้สิทธิการป้องกันตนเองร่วมของญี่ปุ่นในสมัยนายกรัฐมนตรีอาเบะ โดยศึกษาผ่านมุมมองการกระจายความเสี่ยง (Hedging) เพื่อตอบคำถามที่ว่า ญี่ปุ่นใช้สิทธิการป้องกันตนเองร่วมในยุทธศาสตร์อินโด-แปซิฟิกอย่างไร โดยเสนอว่า สิทธิการป้องกันตนเองร่วมช่วยเสริมสร้างการเป็นผู้สร้างสันติภาพเชิงรุกในเวทีโลก การกระชับความสัมพันธ์ด้านความมั่นคงกับพันธมิตรที่มีแนวคิดตามหลักนิติธรรมเหมือนกันนอกเหนือจากสหรัฐอเมริกา เป็นการกระจายความเสี่ยงโดยวิธีถ่วงดุลทางอ้อมให้ยังคงรักษาความสัมพันธ์อันดีกับจีนได้ ขณะเดียวกันก็แสดงถึงการกระจายความเสี่ยงแบบสองชั้นเพื่อลดการพึ่งพาสหรัฐอเมริกา และเล่นบทบาทนำมากขึ้น

Strategic Engagement And Legal Pluralism : Navigating Knowledge And Expertise In Mining Disputes, Sara K. Phillips

Journal of Social Sciences

This article explores how community and civil society actors in mining conflicts strategically engage with legal and technical vocabularies to assert legitimacy, contest exclusion, and influence mining governance. Drawing on an empirical case study of Thailand’s Chatree gold mine, the article analyzes how affected groups navigate overlapping normative systems, such as state law, transnational norms, and technocratic discourses, through informal learning and strategic appropriation of expert language. Framed through the conceptual lens of legal pluralism, the study highlights how actors interpret and mobilize diverse normative orders to articulate grievances, shape narratives, and attempt to gain access to decision-making spaces. These …

Introduction, Jenna Abdel-Kader, Hannah Desjardine

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

From Endowment To Extraction: Critical Mineral Governance And Supply-Chain Integration In The Arctic, Charles Bollwerk

CMC Senior Theses

Annexing Greenland, making Canada the 51st State – what’s it all about? Critical minerals are often treated as a geological and national security problem that can be fixed through strength and coercion. This thesis argues that, in the Arctic, governance structures are what determine whether critical mineral wealth becomes strategically useful. Through a comparative qualitative analysis of Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Russia, and the Nordic countries, it examines what drives variation in critical mineral extraction and supply-chain integration across Arctic states, an especially relevant topic as Western states seek to reduce dependence on Chinese-controlled supply chains. The analysis applies four variables …

Revenge Of The Interceptors? The Dod, Congress, And The Return Of Space-Based Missile Defense During Trump 45, Chad Mcelroy

CMC Senior Theses

The initiation of the Golden Dome for America program has brought space-based missile defense (SBMD) to the forefront of American national security policy and rekindled debates that had laid dormant since the administration of President Ronald Reagan. How, forty-two years after President Reagan first proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, did SBMD return as a national priority? In lieu of public information about the ongoing Golden Dome initiative, this thesis explores the first Trump administration, otherwise known as Trump 45, in order to analyze the development of SBMD proposals by its proponents in Congress and the Department of Defense. I used …

No Coup, No Conscience: Coup-Proofing In The Armenian Genocide, Rachel Svoyskiy

CMC Senior Theses

The Armenian Genocide functioned as a form of coup-proofing under the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Existing scholarship emphasizes nationalism, wartime radicalization, and security dilemmas, but does not fully account for why the military complied, why dissenters were removed, or how Armenian property became tied to political loyalty. Applying Hicham Bou Nassif’s framework of coup-proofing, this study examines four tactics the CUP used to secure military obedience while carrying out mass violence. First, the regime framed Armenians as an existential threat to align the officer corps ideologically with the state. Second, it promoted the material interests of military and …

The Vestiges Of The German Democratic Republic: Memory Politics And Xenophobia In Former East Germany, Diana Zhou

CMC Senior Theses

From the 2015 migration influx onward, xenophobic and nationalist sentiments permeated Germany’s national political discourse. The former socialist territories in eastern Germany have proven particularly susceptible to far-right, anti-immigration, and anti-integration rhetoric. This thesis explores the mnemonic foundations of xenophobic sentiments in former East German states, tracing the development of an antifascist yet ethnically nationalist mnemonic framework to the state-sanctioned myths and invented traditions of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). As the loss of a collective GDR identity produced a reactionary rehabilitation of this framework post-unification, the racial and ethnic “other” — migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees — became constructed …

Eurovision As A Platform For Cultural Diplomacy In Times Of Conflict, Lucy Meza

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines how states utilize the Eurovision Song Contest as a platform for soft power, focusing on the conditions under which cultural performance translates into reputational gains. Drawing on Joseph Nye’s concept of soft power, Biasioli’s theory of songwashing, Zamorano’s typology of cultural diplomacy, Anholt’s competitive identity framework, and Feklyunina’s analysis of identity and narrative, it argues that Eurovision’s effectiveness as a soft power platform is fundamentally contingent on the alignment between a state’s cultural narrative and dominant international perceptions of its legitimacy. Through a qualitative comparative case study approach, the thesis examines two nations whose Eurovision participation during …

The Relationship Between U.S. Presidents And Governors From Opposing Political Parties: Policy Implementation And Crisis Management, Adam Richey

Honors College Theses

This thesis studies the impact of partisan divisions between U.S. presidents and state governors in regard to policy implementation and crisis management of the American federal system. While previous research has mainly addressed congressional polarization, executive relationships across different levels of government have received comparatively less scholarly focus.  Particularism theory argues that electoral incentives shape executive behavior, and this study finds that political alignment significantly affects cooperation, coordination, and responsiveness during times of crises. Focusing on qualitative comparative case study methods, the analysis examines Hurricane Katrina (2005) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021). The results show that partisan division most often …

Simulating Social Attitudes With Llms: Accuracy, Demographic Effects, And Refusal Behavior In The Sensitive Domain Of Suicide Prevention, Cristina J. Perez, Michael P. Vasquez Jr., Philippe J. Giabbanelli, Patrick Y. Wu

VMASC Publications

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to simulate public opinion, yet their validity in sensitive policy domains remains underexplored. We evaluate whether LLMs can reproduce attitudes toward suicide prevention policies using 32 questions drawn from seven nationally representative U.S. surveys (2023-2025). We systematically vary demographic conditioning (race/ethnicity, gender, age, education, income, party), prompt framing (direct elicitation, respondent embodiment, specialist embodiment), and model architecture (GPT-5 Nano, DeepSeek V3.2, Meta Llama 3.1 8B, Mistral Small 24B). Across 811,560 prompts, the mean absolute error—the average gap between predicted and human response distributions—is 23 percentage points. We also find that LLM responses to …

News Media Sentiment Toward Chinese Ai: A Comparative Analysis With Belt And Road Initiative Involvement And Public Opinion On China, Asya Vaisberg

Pomona Senior Theses

This study evaluates different countries' news media’s sentiment towards Chinese AI, between May 2023 and May 2024, by using Microsoft Azure NLP Sentiment Analysis. The results are then compared with the country’s public opinion on China and its involvement in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). For this study 12 countries have been selected which are USA, Australia, Pakistan, Peru, Russia, Romania, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Philippines, Brazil, and Egypt. For each one, GNews Application Programming Interface (API), which has access to more than 60,000 global news sources, was used to aggregate relevant news articles based on queried keywords. The collected …

Elite Cues Vs. Economic Vulnerabilities: What Explains Isolationist Foreign Policy Attitudes Among Americans?, Sabyasachi Karmaker

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines whether contemporary isolationist foreign policy attitudes among Americans are better explained by elite political cues or by economic vulnerabilities. Using data from the 2024 American National Election Study (ANES), the study also examines which mechanism holds more explanatory power in shaping isolationist views. The findings show that both elite cues and economic vulnerabilities are associated with isolationist attitudes, but elite cues have greater explanatory power. These results suggest that contemporary American isolationism is more strongly associated with political identity and elite messaging than with economic hardship alone.

Artificial Intelligence And African Studies, Gloria Emeagwali

Comparative Civilizations Review

African Studies is a conglomerate of multidisciplinary academic fields that include paleontology, history, literature, linguistics, philosophy, African Traditional Religion and theology, art, and Afrofuturism, as well as African Indigenous Knowledge Systems. This paper focuses on the latter, namely African Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS), and African Studies, in general, from the viewpoint of two chatbots, namely, ChatGPT-4, and DeepSeek v.3. Do these models make a break with Eurocentrism and prevent unbiased information on AIKS? Are the underlying conceptual issues underpinning AIKS fully grasped, and if so, what are some relevant examples of this accomplishment? How do these programs respond to specialized …

Civilizational Nationalism And The Rise Of The Civilization State: A Response To Stephen Satkiewicz, Nicholas Morieson

Comparative Civilizations Review

The previous issue of this journal discussed the phenomenon of civilization-states. As several authors observed, over the past two decades leaders from Beijing to Moscow, from New Delhi to Ankara, have increasingly portrayed the nations they govern as civilization states, or heirs to and continuations of great civilizations (Greenfeld 2025; Cross and Okunev 2025; Alalykin-Izvekov 2025; Satkiewicz 2025). In doing this, they often summon deep time, speaking of thousands of years of cultural continuity, and present their states as guardians of cultural traditions in an age of immense social change.

Religiosity And Political Affiliation As Moderators For Climate Change Belief, Jenna L. Hiljus

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Climate change remains a polarized issue in the United States despite broad scientific consensus. The present study examined how specific variables within political ideology (social and economic conservatism) and religiosity (belief, praxis, and morality) relate to climate change belief among undergraduate students at a private Christian university. Participants (N = 130) completed measures of climate change perceptions, multidimensional religiosity, and social and economic conservatism. Correlational analyses showed medium-sized, negative relationships between climate change belief and both social and economic conservatism, with no significant difference between the two domains. This finding suggests that political conservatism may operate as a unified construct …

Genocide, Memory & Prevention: Ethical Inquiry And Critical Thinking Through Research & Ai, Linda Humes

Open Educational Resources

This assignment engages students in ethical inquiry and critical analysis by examining lesser-known or silenced genocides within a global and historical context. Using academic sources alongside responsible use of generative AI, students compare dominant and marginalized narratives, analyze recurring patterns and causes of genocide, and reflect on prevention strategies. The assignment emphasizes ethical AI use, historical memory, and the development of civic awareness, empathy, and critical thinking in the study of race, power, and inequality.

Crimes Of The Powerful And The Looting Of Contemporary Nigeria: An Integrated Theoretical Perspective, Charles Ubah

African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies

Crime of the powerful is a humongous social problem with the potential to ravage development and threaten the corporate existence of nation states. The case of contemporary Nigeria is the focal point of analysis in this paper. The objective of the paper, therefore, is to investigate the menace in Nigeria from an integrated theoretical perspective. The methodology was exploratory survey and review of literature which were content analyzed. The theoretical framework is a kind of Modified Multiple Reinforcing Social Forces Theory. Findings indicate that, beside its high prevalence rate, elite criminality in the various forms of corruption, property and environmental …

Understanding The Flow: Deconstructing The Link Between Immigrants And Fentanyl, Madeline F. Nesbitt

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explains how a false link between undocumented immigration and fentanyl becomes widely accepted in the United States. Empirical data show that most fentanyl enters through legal ports of entry and that U.S. citizens account for the majority of those caught transporting it. Why, then, do 41% of Americans attribute overdose deaths to migrants trafficking fentanyl? This project examines how this myth is built, repeated, and sustained, and what policy consequences follow from it.

When complex social problems lack clear culprits, political actors often manufacture them through scapegoating. Current literature documents how political actors link immigrants to drug crimes, …

Morals Without Movement: Veganism, Contentious Politics, And The Lifestyle Politics Constraint, Luke M. Carfaro

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines whether veganism constitutes a social movement through Social Movement Theory frameworks, emphasizing Sidney Tarrow's Power in Movement. Through analysis of veganism's empirical properties (collective challenge, common purpose, collective identity, and sustained interaction) and key procedural mechanisms (framing, mobilizing structures, and repertoires of contention), this thesis determines that veganism fails to meet the empirical criteria of a social movement and is more accurately classified as a lifestyle movement—a movement in which political participation is expressed through private consumption rather than sustained collective contention. Using the Make America Healthy Again movement as a counterexample, this thesis comparatively illustrates …

Bitcoin And The American Conflict Over Money And Property, Jacob Smagula

CMC Senior Theses

I argue that Bitcoin is the latest expression of the recurring American conflict over who controls the terms of money and property, and that the political coalition formed around Bitcoin shares the same characteristics as earlier coalitions formed around this struggle. I review three historical cases that each produced a coalition opposing the existing monetary order: the Bank War of the 1830s, the Free Silver movement of the 1890s, and the populist backlash against the Federal Reserve during the 1979 Farm Crisis and the 2008 Great Recession. I find that Bitcoin’s architecture, which allows for self-custody, permissionless access, and an …

Moving The Goalposts: Saudi Arabia, Football, And The Changing Rules Of Global Legitimacy, Sanskriti S. Kumar

CMC Senior Theses

Most commentary on Gulf state sports investment concludes that sportswashing fails: Saudi Arabia's favorability ratings remain low, its human rights situation has deteriorated, and Western public opinion shows no measurable improvement. This thesis argues that this conclusion applies the wrong standard. Asking whether Saudi Arabia has become more admired misses the more consequential question of whether it has become more accepted, and treating those two outcomes as equivalent produces misleading results. This thesis develops an original Normalization-Attraction Framework to evaluate whether the Saudi Public Investment Fund's October 2021 acquisition of Newcastle United Football Club has generated measurable political returns. The …