Digital Commons Network^™

The Relationship Between State Effectiveness And State Legitimacy: A Quantitative Test, Bich Thi Ngoc Tran

Theses and Dissertations

Legitimacy is a contested concept in political science. The question of legitimacy has been addressed in various topics, including state formation, state building, and state failure. This research is an attempt to quantitatively test the relationship between state legitimacy and state effectiveness and development in the economy, politics, and society. By examining the literature on legitimacy and its sources, the research tests the following hypothesis: a state with better performance in macro issues, including economic performance, social welfare, and political participation, is more likely to enjoy a higher level of legitimacy. In other words, this study attempts to establish a …

Beyond The Movement: State Action In Addressing Campus Sexual Violence, Amijo Wadena

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The "Me Too" movement, started by actress Alyssa Milano, has helped shine a light on the prevalence of sexual harassment and sexual violence throughout the country. While it has helped the public understand the magnitude of the issue, it has only started the conversation about sexual violence. And while the focus has mostly been on Hollywood, there has been one area that is being overlooked; sexual violence on College and University campuses. With Secretary DeVos' repeal of Obama era policies, the current administration is being a lot less transparent when it comes to sexual violence, in general. With policy-making responsibility …

Ending Mass Incarceration: Support Among State Legislators For The Abolishment Of Monetary Bail In Favor Of A Risk Assessment Tool, Haley Grieshaber

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Who We Are And How We Vote: Individual Difference Factors In Politics, Abby Joens-Witherow 18

Honor Scholar Theses

The current research focuses on the relationships between individual differences and political preferences, particularly conservatism as measured by the Social and Economic Conservatism Scale (Everett, 2013). I conducted a survey using the crowdsourcing platform Mechanical Turk that assessed individuals in terms of demographics, the Big Five Aspect Scales, Moral Foundations, Social Dominance Orientation, Right Wing Authoritarianism, and opinions about the 2016 presidential candidates (Hillary Clinton & Donald Trump). Through hierarchical multiple regression, I was able to find correlations among openness to experience (-) and conscientiousness (+) with conservatism in terms of the Big Five. I found that binding moral foundations …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of U.S. Anti-Slavery Legislation Through The Lens Of Supply Chain Management, Alexander Marion Mingus

Honors Theses

Whether knowingly or unknowingly, business supply chains are often tainted with slavery and forced labor practices. In an effort to address this reality, the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act of 2010 (CTSCA) requires companies in California to publish a statement disclosing companies’ efforts to prevent this potential abuse. This study evaluates the effectiveness of the California legislation by observing media trends and collecting expert interviews and data from business leaders, academics, and legislators. The data reveals both strengths and weaknesses in the California bill, which informs future attempts to create antislavery legislation addressing corporate supply chain abuses. The CTSCA …

Volume 10, Taylor Hogg, Tiffany Carter, Brandyn Johnson, Haleigh James, Josh Baker, Tyler Cernak, Kirsten Bauer, Allie Snavely, Mary Zell Galen, Eric Powell, Thomas Wise, Katie Kinsey, Beth Barbolla, Maeleigh Ferlet, Rebecca Morra, Michala Day, Alexandra Evangelista, Max Flores, Harley Hodges, Clardene Jones, Harrison Samaniego, Jamesha Watson, Abby Gargiulo, Heather Green, Haley Klepatzki, Juan Guevara, Dani Bondurant, Michael Joseph Link Jr., Pamela Dahl, Maeve Losen, Charlotte Murphey

Incite: The Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Introduction Dr. Roger A. Byrne

An Analysis of Media Framing in Cases of Violence Against Women by Taylor Hogg

Writing in the Discipline of Nursing by Tiffany Carter

Photography by Brandyn Johnson

The Hidden Life of Beef Cattle: A Study of Cattle Welfare on Traditional Ranches and Industrial Farms by Haleigh James

Bloodworth's by Josh Baker and Tyler Cernak

Prosimians: Little Bodies, Big Significance by Kirsten Bauer

Skinformed by Allie Snavely

Coopertition and Gracious Professionalism: The Effects of First Robotics Folklore and Culture on the Stem Community by Mary Zell Galen

Tilt by Eric Powell And Thomas Wise

The Millennial …

Roundtable: Supporting Professional Masters' Programs In Social Science And Policy Fields, Elisabeth Shields

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

Professional masters programs in the social sciences and policy fields prepare participants for middle and senior positions in the private sector, government, non-profits, and international organizations. In addition to ensuring further disciplinary knowledge, programs often include components on managerial, organizational, communication, policy analysis, and similar skills. Institutions are adding programs in interdisciplinary and emerging areas to their existing professional programs in business, counseling psychology, social work, and public administration.

Librarians face distinctive challenges in supporting such programs. Faculty teaching in these programs may be adjuncts unfamiliar with their institution’s library offerings and services. Some students have just completed undergraduate programs, …

Why Gun Violence Continues Its Rampage Across America: A Comparison Of American And Australian Firearm Policies, Daniel Schaub

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This thesis is a comparative case study between US and Australian firearm policies and gun culture. I ask, given the large number of injuries and mass shootings due to firearms, why has the United States not implemented stronger firearm regulations? I conduct a comprehensive literature review of American gun culture throughout history and modern firearm violence in both the United States and Australia. By utilizing the framework of historical institutionalism and the concept path dependency, I explain why and how institutions in the United States are unique and how they differ from similar institutions in Australia. I find that the …

Opening Up To Oers: Electronic Original Sourcebook Vs. Traditional Textbook In The Introduction To American Government Course, Shawna M. Brandle

Publications and Research

Traditional American Government textbooks are expensive and often unpopular with students. New technologies and Open Educational Resources (OERs) open up the potential for change, but questions of quality are ever present: can OERs really help students learn better, or are they just cheaper? I developed an OER based on original sources and compared student learning outcomes with the OER section to those in a free digital textbook section. While the OER I created did not work as well as I had hoped, I nonetheless developed a redesign of my course and my approach to teaching, which is the true benefit …

Philanthropy And Immigration Enforcement: The Role Of Grantmaking On Nonprofit Influence During Secure Communities, Apolonia Calderon

Latino Public Policy

Uniquely positioned in our American democracy, foundations hold private resources they leveraged to promote their private values within our public arena. The independence of foundations, primarily private and family foundations, allows them to exert influence over public policy down to the local delivery of public good and services. An understudied policy area pertains to understanding how philanthropic funding impacts immigration policy and local enforcement. This report focuses on studying how philanthropic funding for immigration services is associated with reducing the identification of deportable immigrants, during Secure Communities. As foundations leverage their private resources to help fund nonprofits that promote their …

Explaining Civilian Attacks: Terrorist Networks, Principal-Agent Problems And Target Selection, Max Abrahms, Matthew Ward, Ryan Kennedy

Department of Political Science

Terrorist groups exhibit variation in their targeting choices. Why do some groups direct their violence against civilians while others limit this occurrence? This study analyzes the network relationships between terrorist groups to elucidate their targeting behavior. Drawing upon insights from the organizational ecology and conflict literatures, we predict that terrorist group affiliates will be significantly more likely than their parent group to attack civilian targets. Our original principal-agent theory consistently outperforms extant explanations in a multi-method analysis of 238 terrorist groups from 1998 to 2005. These results shed new light on why certain terrorist groups are more likely than others …

The Incarceration Nation: Interpreting The United States Imprisonment Rate, Robert Sharp

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This research paper begins by establishing the importance of studying the United States’ incarceration rate. Overall mass imprisonment and racial disparities in sentencing are two of the main concerns when discussing this issue. Previously published literature has indicated various contributory factors to the racial disparity in sentencing, such as judge’s discretion, educational attainment, and policy implementation. This paper tests five hypotheses that assess which factors influence the incarceration rate. The independent variables are overall minority population, public ideology, educational attainment, unemployment, and poverty. Each hypothesis predicts positive or negative relationships between the United States incarceration rate and the corresponding independent …

Indefinite Detention, Colonialism, And Settler Prerogative In The United States, Natsu Taylor Saito

Faculty Publications By Year

The primacy accorded individual civil and political rights is often touted as one of the United States' greatest achievements. However, mass incarcerations of indefinite duration have occurred consistently throughout U.S. history and have primarily targeted people of color. The dominant narrative insists that the United States is a political democracy and portrays each instance of indefinite detention in exceptionalist terms. This essay argues that the historical patterns of indefinite detention are better explained by recognizing the United States as a settler colonial state whose claimed prerogative to expand its territorial reach and contain/control populations over which it exercises jurisdiction inevitably …

The United States, Mexico, And The War On Drugs In The Trump Administration, James M. Cooper

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the war on drugs as persecuted by the United States and how it has been exported to Mexico. It also explores the increased efforts in the drugs war that the Trump administration, through the U.S. Department of Justice, is pursuing at a domestic level. Part I of this Article provides an outline of the dynamics in the quickly evolving and highly tense relationship between the United States and Mexico. Part II of this Article details the historical background of the U.S.-Mexico border region and demonstrates that the border has long been a contested site. Part III provides …

U.S. Interagency Coordination On Countering Violent Extremism Abroad, Jason Gush

CMC Senior Theses

CVE is complex. It requires combatting the narratives and ideology of many extremist groups around the globe, constructing environments with appealing alternatives to extremism, and most importantly, sensitivity to the variety of circumstances in which CVE takes place to effectively battle the root causes of extremism. Constructing a complete CVE effort thus requires a great variety of skills, coordinated to efficient implementation. Despite notional commitment, U.S. CVE abroad lacks interagency coordination. JIATF-S offers a strong model of interagency coordination, from which lessons may be applied to the formation of an interagency CVE effort. Interagency coordination would bring extensive expertise and …

Morals In The United States Of America: Are They In Their Death Throes?, John A. Cook

Communication Faculty Publications

This article explores the ethics of large complex systems in the United States of America in three major case studies: the food industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the political/governmental institutions. Using the simple Aristotelian heuristic of good sense, good character and good will, the conclusion is that ethics is not a high priority due in large part to the relentless pursuit of large sums of money at any cost.

The Republican Party, Conservatives, And The Future Of Capital Punishment, Ben Jones

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

The United States has experienced a significant decline in the death penalty during the first part of the twenty-first century, as death sentences, executions, public support, and states with capital punishment all have declined. Many recent reforms banning or placing a moratorium on executions have occurred in blue states, in line with the notion that ending the death penalty is a progressive cause. Challenging this narrative, however, is the emergence of Republican lawmakers as champions of death penalty repeal legislation in red states. This Article puts these efforts by Republican lawmakers into historical context and explains the conservative case against …

Explaining Variance In Crime Rates Among Florida Counties, Philip M. Dispirito

Honors Undergraduate Theses

What explains the variance in crime rates among Florida counties? Bivariate regression found that clearance rate had a statistically significant negative relationship with crime rate, and that the following variables had a statistically significant positive association with crime rate: law enforcement funding, population density, Hispanic population percent, the percent of males in the 18-39 range, and the percent of immigrants. It seems probable that law enforcement funding is actually dependent on crime rate rather than causing increases in crime rate: counties with higher crime rates likely spend more money on law enforcement to combat crime. To deal with significant multicollinearity, …

The Judicialization Of Peace, Courtney Hillebrecht, Alexandra Huneeus, Sandra Borda

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

As international courts gain in influence, many worry that they will impoverish domestic politics— that they will limit democratic deliberation, undermine domestic institutions, or even thwart crucial political initiatives such as efforts to make peace. Indeed, many states are in the midst of withdrawing, or actively considering withdrawal, from international commitments presided over by international courts. The Article focuses on the currently unfolding Colombian peace process, the first to be negotiated under the watch of not one but two international courts, to show that these concerns misconstrue the way international courts actually work.

Throughout four years of peace talks, many …

Policy Implications Of News Media Coverage Of The Islamic State Of Iraq And Syria., Godfred A. Ababio

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) garnered global news media attention in Summer 2014 when it seized a significant section of land in Iraq and Syria. The group then mishandled and executed its captives. There is a lack of consensus among the international community, led by Russia and the United States, on how best to address the threat posed by ISIS. An understanding of the function of Russian and U.S. news media coverage of the ISIS threat is an appropriate research topic. The purpose of this qualitative content analysis study was to explore how the U.S, Russian, and …

With Liberty And Justice For All: An Examination Of The United States' Compliance With Rule Of Law As It Relates To Domestic And International Terrorism, Jonathan William Maze

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

This study examines what factors contribute to United States' compliance with rule of law in response to terrorism. A qualitative analysis utilizing a comparative case study approach to examine the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations' response to domestic and international terrorism. This study tests what impact the location of terrorist attacks, nationality of terrorist actors, and presidential ideology have upon rule of law compliance. Results from this study illustrate the causal relationship between rule of law compliance and presidential ideology, while taking into account the impact of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.

Deepening Democracy: Inclusion, Deliberation, And Voice In The Grassroots South, Annie L. Boiter-Jolley

Theses and Dissertations

Through an exploration of grassroots challenges to shallow democracy in South Carolina, this dissertation offers a model of democratization based on inclusion, deliberation, and empowerment as a remedy for democratic insufficiency. I posit that greater emphasis on inclusive democratic deliberation, both inside and outside formal political structures, will help deepen the South’s shallow democracy, and that inclusive deliberation fostered through grassroots organizing that priorities consciousness raising, empowerment, and activism training will positively affect participants, deliberation, and policy outcomes. Taking a grounded theory approach, I consider case studies of three organizations based in Columbia, South Carolina, and their attending theories of …

Masculinity (De)Construction And Policing: A Comparative Study Of Representation, Policies, And Legitimacy, Sarah Huffman

Senior Independent Study Theses

The culture of policing oftentimes equates police competency with masculinity, valorizing physicality and bravery, but at the expense of other characteristics included in policework such as service and protection. The introduction of more female officers into police services leads the question as to how their increased representation (de)constructs traditional masculinist attitudes and affects gender inclusive policy and actions of a police service, encompassing police response to cases of domestic and sexual violence. This study investigates whether higher gender equity in a police service increases gender inclusive policy and actions by the police and whether this factor, in turn, increases public …

Pursuing Justice In Africa: Competing Imaginaries And Contested Practices, Jessica Johnson, George Hamandishe Karekwaivanane

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Pursuing Justice in Africa focuses on the many actors pursuing many visions of justice across the African continent—their aspirations, divergent practices, and articulations of international and vernacular idioms of justice. The essays selected by editors Jessica Johnson and George Hamandishe Karekwaivanane engage with topics at the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship across a wide range of disciplines. These include activism, land tenure, international legal institutions, and postconflict reconciliation.

Building on recent work in sociolegal studies that foregrounds justice over and above concepts such as human rights and legal pluralism, the contributors grapple with alternative approaches to the concept of justice …

Good Works And The Great Commission: An Exploration Of Religious Influence In Evangelical Faith-Based Organisations In Canada And India, Ravi Gokani

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

By the mid-1990s, the post-war, Keynesian welfare state that had typified much the landscape of service provision in North America had already begun seriously to corrode in the presence of a resurgent classical liberalism. This meant, among other things, an increased role for civil society organisations in the provision of social welfare to citizens in need. As part of this restructuring of the welfare state, faith-based organisations found a renewed place, bolstered in part by favourable legislation, political support, and the revival of a once-recluse evangelicalism. Today, with decades of maturity and the aide of technology, evangelical faith-based organisations are …

Is There “Hope For Every Addicted American”? The New U.S. War On Drugs, B Stone

Publications and Research

The U.S. has been waging a War on Drugs for the last forty years. But in the mid-2010s, a series of reforms have rejected this militant approach. How did these policies manage to break through a gridlocked Congress? What is the nature of these reforms, and what are their political implications? Using critical discourse analysis, I demonstrate that a new policy framework of “addiction recovery” defines the political crises of the opioid epidemic, the failure of the War on Drugs, and mass incarceration in terms of disease, attributing Drug War injustices to prejudice against “addiction,” rather than a constellation of …

Applying John Kingdon’S Three Stream Model To The Policy Idea Of Universal Preschool, George Atupem

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Public education is no longer the great equalizer in the United States. The achievement gap is widening and in many areas education policies are perpetuating the problem. This phenomenon has created an education system built on inequality. The achievement gap in the United States has continued to widen because many children are missing out on the educational, economic, and social benefits of attending a high-quality preschool program. Access to quality preschool is an issue that briefly found its way onto the national agenda in 2013 but has since been edged out by broader national issues, such as healthcare and immigration. …

Edward A. Ross: Social Development And Social Control, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

With a foundation in philosophy and history, core concepts of sociology and criminology that were initially posited over a century ago are still useful in understanding the workings of today's society. The contributions of Edward A. Ross have helped latter day researchers centralize their studies of polycentric topics by using social control as an omnipresent social fact. By comparing Ross's descriptions of 19th century society and the researcher's descriptions of 21^st century society, a continuous understanding of a heavily pluralistic discipline comes to life.

The Impact Of Democratization And International Exposure To Indonesian Counter-Terrorism, Ali Abdullah Wibisono

Global: Jurnal Politik Internasional

This article explains the influence of the United States of America to Indonesian counter-terrorism. Two aspects of counter-terrorism are explained: effectiveness and adherence to human rights values. It argues that America’s emphasis on the need to forge security cooperation in responding to terrorism facilitated human rights values to be adopted as justification of counter-terrorism, rather than a balancer to its effectiveness. Indonesia’s cooperation with the U.S in counter-terrorism has facilitated the growth of the restitutive or kinetic measures, but neglects a strengthening of political leadership over institutional development of counter-terrorism. The latter can be judged from the absence of policy-evaluation, …

Does Truth Promote Peace? Toward A Greater Understanding Of Truth Commissions As Transitional Justice Mechanisms In Post-Conflict Countries, Eric Royer

Dissertations

This study explores the societal effects of transitional justice mechanisms in post-conflict countries. In particular, an emphasis is placed on exploring whether truth commissions, which are suggested in virtually all post-conflict situations today, exhibit a positive or negative effect on key indicators, such as democracy, human rights, economic development, and the durability of peace. Three central research questions are examined. First, do truth and reconciliation commissions “work”? In other words, are they associated with a reduction in communal violence and improvements in democratic institutions, human rights protections, and economic development? Second, must truth commissions be coupled with transitional justice mechanisms …