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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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American Politics

Selected Works

2015

Politics

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Mindful Justice: The Search For Gandhi’S Sympathetic State After Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel Sep 2015

Mindful Justice: The Search For Gandhi’S Sympathetic State After Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel

Nehal A. Patel

One of the most startling examples of unmitigated disaster occurred in Bhopal, India, in 1984, when a Union Carbide pesticide plant exploded tons of methyl isocyanate into the air, killing 3800 people overnight. 30 years later, the plant site has not been remediated, and the estimated death toll from the explosion now has reached over 20,000. Disaster victims repeatedly have sought relief directly from the government. Yet, the Indian and US governments and Union Carbide have refused to provide the necessary resources for proper remediation. In this Article, I examine the state’s response to the Bhopal disaster using the thought …


Fighting Over The Founders: How We Remember The American Revolution, Andrew Schocket Jan 2015

Fighting Over The Founders: How We Remember The American Revolution, Andrew Schocket

Andrew M Schocket

The American Revolution is all around us. It is pictured as big as billboards and as small as postage stamps, evoked in political campaigns and car advertising campaigns, relived in museums and revised in computer games. As the nation’s founding moment, the American Revolution serves as a source of powerful founding myths, and remains the most accessible and most contested event in U.S. history: more than any other, it stands as a proxy for how Americans perceive the nation’s aspirations. Americans’ increased fascination with the Revolution over the past two decades represents more than interest in the past. It’s also …


Dog Whistling, The Color-Blind Jurisprudential Regime And The Constitutional Politics Of Race, Calvin J. Terbeek Jan 2015

Dog Whistling, The Color-Blind Jurisprudential Regime And The Constitutional Politics Of Race, Calvin J. Terbeek

Calvin J TerBeek

Ian Haney Lopez’s new book, "Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class", has a provocative thesis. Lopez contends that dog-whistling, that is, coded racial rhetoric, “explains how politicians backed by concentrated wealth manipulate racial appeals to win elections and also to win support for regressive policies that help corporations and the super-rich, and in the process wreck the middle class." Though this may seem plausible enough, the thesis cannot stand up to scrutiny; the relevant political science literature provides no support for this. What is more, Lopez's treatment of the Supreme Court's …


“(Un)Conventional Wisdom And Presidential Politics: The Myth Of Convention Bumps And Favorite Son Vice-Presidents”, David A. Schultz Dec 2014

“(Un)Conventional Wisdom And Presidential Politics: The Myth Of Convention Bumps And Favorite Son Vice-Presidents”, David A. Schultz

David A Schultz

Conventional wisdom pervades US presidential politics. Among "old politicians' tales" are that a political party's placement of a national convention in a state can affecting presidential voting there, swinging or flipping it to its presidential candidate. Second, that the selection of a vice-presidential candidate as a favorite son (or daughter) will deliver a state's electoral votes to a presidential ticket. This article examines the placement of national party conventions and selection of vice-presidential candidates for Democratic and Republican Parties since 1948. It finds that presidential candidates do not earn a state bump or advantage by either locating a national convention …