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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Normalization Policies With Cuba: Implications For Political And Economic Reform, Ramona N. Khan Sep 2016

Normalization Policies With Cuba: Implications For Political And Economic Reform, Ramona N. Khan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For longer than the past half century, the relationship between the United States and Cuba has been one of antagonism, mistrust, betrayal, hostility and defiance. Decades of mutual hostility arising from Cuba’s post revolution adoption of an economic system that emulated that of the Soviet Union, along with the long history of U.S. interference in Cuba’s domestic and international affairs that predated the Castro revolution and continued afterward, have resulted in this rancorous relationship. Cuba’s move to communism shortly after the Castro regime came to power was regarded as a threat to both democracy and capitalism by the United States, …


“God Is Near": American Theocracy And The Political Theology Of Joseph Smith, Alan P. Koenig Sep 2016

“God Is Near": American Theocracy And The Political Theology Of Joseph Smith, Alan P. Koenig

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Mormon prophet Joseph Smith established the quintessentially “American religion” according to religious critics like Harold Bloom, perhaps the last major religion to emerge in the Western world. Founded during the rise of Jacksonian Democracy, early Mormonism espoused many populist and egalitarian tenets, yet behind Smith’s theology of an ever more exalted path to individual godhood lay an extraordinary politics demanding a new, theocratic hierarchy. This dissertation will discuss how Smith’s apocalypticism and exceptional politics of continual revelation confronted a pluralistic Protestant society with the superseding aim of creating a uniquely American kingdom. As a political theorist, Smith’s apocalyptic theology …


Politics Between And Within Us: Authenticity And Theatricality In Modern Political Thought, Daniel J. Mccool Feb 2016

Politics Between And Within Us: Authenticity And Theatricality In Modern Political Thought, Daniel J. Mccool

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation details the ways in which two distinct models of politics — the politics of authenticity and the politics of theatricality — have influenced political rhetoric and activity in America and beyond. The focus on authenticity in politics goes back to the ancients, yet it has taken on greater political significance in the modern era. Morally-charged language of “telling the truth”, or “being oneself” in politics has meant that public judgment and analysis has increasingly focused on the interiority of the speaker: one’s intentions, feelings and consistency, rather than on the persuasive case one is attempting to communicate. In …


Richard A. Posner: A Study In Judicial Entrepreneurship, Sean J. Shannon Feb 2016

Richard A. Posner: A Study In Judicial Entrepreneurship, Sean J. Shannon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the role of Richard Posner, one of the most prolific and innovative legal thinkers over the past forty years, as a judicial entrepreneur in his efforts to persuade the legal academy and judiciary to incorporate economic principles into the judicial decision making process in market and non-market areas of the law and legal discourse and thereby to re-examine the role of the judge. Though political scientists have explored the entrepreneurial activities of policy makers and political actors, they have given little attention to the role of judges as judicial entrepreneurs. This dissertation develops a comprehensive theoretical understanding …


The Hermeneutics Of International Trade Conflicts: U.S. Punitive Trade Policy Towards China And Japan, Barry F. Murdaco Feb 2016

The Hermeneutics Of International Trade Conflicts: U.S. Punitive Trade Policy Towards China And Japan, Barry F. Murdaco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes punitive trade conflicts between the U.S. and two trading partners: China and Japan. Punitive trade conflicts can be defined as trade wars between two states, retaliatory tariffs, or other forms of conflict, e.g. preventing the acquisition of foreign assets or sanctions for an undervalued exchange rate. I will examine several trade conflicts between the U.S. and Japan in the 1980s and several trade conflicts between the U.S. and China from 2001 to the present. This study is situated within a larger debate concerning the resolution of four theoretical "puzzles" in political science. The first concerns the dispute …


Through The Gateway: Marijuana Production, Governance, And The Drug War Détente, Michael Polson Feb 2016

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 Politics Of Court Driven Morality Policy: A Comparative Analysis Of Abortion And Same-Sex Marriage 1971-2015, Korey L. Hughes Feb 2016

The Politics Of Court Driven Morality Policy: A Comparative Analysis Of Abortion And Same-Sex Marriage 1971-2015, Korey L. Hughes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation had two principal components. First was the development of an argument outlining the five critical differences between abortion and same-sex marriage policy, which highlight the current insufficiency of the existing morality politics framework. These differences were: the duration of the issue, whether it demonstrated an incrementalist of a punctuated equilibrium theory of policy change, the scope of conflict, the degree of institutional entrenchment within the two parties, and the social construction of stakeholders. I then advanced five hypotheses to explain why these differences between the two policy areas in both process and outcome existed, for the purpose of …