Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Presidential Influence On The Bureaucracy: The Curious Case Of Lina Khan, Nickolas Remish

Student Research Submissions

How effective can a president be in promoting his or her policies through the bureaucracy? Most theories postulate the president has influence – via appointees, budgeting, and executive orders. This paper unpacks the president’s influence on the bureaucracy by analyzing President Biden’s effect on antitrust, particularly with regards to addressing labor concerns. Biden appears to depart from previous presidential administrations due to his heightened emphasis on labor’s need for protection and antitrust law as the optimal vehicle for helping workers. The data, pulled from federal and state court antitrust cases since 2000, relies on textual analysis with regards to the …

“This Is Not A Game:” Exploring Qanon Conspiracy As An Arg Through The Lens Of Theodor Adorno, Corbin Poyer

Student Research Submissions

Since 2017, an insidious conspiracy theory has spawned and spread across various internet forums and social media platforms. Named QAnon (often shortened to simply "Q"), this conspiracy exists as a "catch-all" conspiracy with an inherently ambiguous set of core beliefs and ever-changing end goal surrounding a mythical event named "The Storm," a period of civil unrest that ends with the purported cabals prevalent in the American government being brought to justice and the heroic Q-adherents being placed in positions of power. However, this "Storm" has yet to occur, highlighting the myriad of non-occurring events and claims that, logically, should have …

Is No News Good News?: Exploring The Impact Of Social Media Use On Misinformation Beliefs, Corbin Poyer

Student Research Submissions

Does diminishing access to print news have an impact on people’s propensity to believe misinformation? What if this misinformation emanates from an online source as opposed to a print source? The focus of recent research on misinformation has been narrow: (1) recognizing its existence and acknowledging its potential impact, and (2) generating and categorizing potential analytical types of misinformation. However, the ramifications of vanishing print media have so far been overlooked. This paper asserts a connection between news sources and misinformation beliefs, further positing that the decline in the quality and availability of quality print journalism predicates an individual’s belief …

A Trump-Shaped Shadow: Demonstrating Competing Republican Identities To Gain Party Support, Amede Karina-Plun

Student Research Submissions

How do Republican candidates demonstrate their conservative identity to appeal to Republican primary voters? Recent scholarship finds that ascendant groups within the Republican Party have changed the party’s platform, moved to the extreme right, and redefined the American conservative identity. This paper hypothesizes that former President Donald Trump is advantaged in the 2024 Republican primary as the party’s standard bearer. Additionally, I hypothesize that former Governor Nikki Haley and Governor Ron DeSantis try to gain support from Republican voters by redefining what it means to be a Republican, and they use their appeal to Republican voters as alternatives to Trump …

Electing Generational Immigrants: Campaign Messaging Strategies Of Asian American Candidates In Virginia, Jane Michael

Student Research Submissions

Asian Americans are one of the fastest growing minority groups in the U.S. due to immigration – so why don’t we hear more of their stories in electoral politics? Ninety percent of Asian Americans are immigrants or children of immigrants, which is an identity that can and often does influence political participation and motivation for both voters and candidates. Recent theories look directly at linked fate, which posits that individuals who share a group identity, usually a racial or ethnic minority identity, also share a sense that anything that affects another member of the group, impacts them all. This research …

Trump's 2016 Election Win: Why He Owes It To Jesus, Margaret Jones

Student Research Submissions

The election of Donald J. Trump in 2016 was a shock that rippled across America. It came out of the blue and was pushed forward by the most religious sect of the US population. This left many questioning the power that Trump held to sway these voters and convince them of his religious fervor. What many people did not pay attention to was the unique religious background that Trump had. He was raised in the church of Norman Vincent Peale, famed prosperity gospel minister and creator of the “Power of Positive Thinking.” Peale’s teachings revolved around the effect of confidence …

Tools Of Oppression: The Virginia School System And The School To Prison Pipeline, Natalie Johnson-Abbott

Student Research Submissions

This paper examines the intersection of race, cultural expression, and disciplinary practices within the American education system, focusing on Virginia's school districts. Recent legislative efforts, such as the CROWN Act in Texas, have sought to address discriminatory practices related to cultural expression in schools. Legal actions, like the lawsuit against the Winner School District in South Dakota, have aimed to rectify disparities in disciplinary outcomes for Indigenous students. However, meaningful reform requires more than just legislative and legal interventions; it necessitates a fundamental shift in educational practices to promote inclusivity and cultural sensitivity. This includes diversifying school staff, implementing culturally …

“Every Nation Except Our Own”: The Social Gospel, Anti-Immigrant Sentiments, And U.S. Foreign Policy, Andrea Darmawan

Student Research Submissions

This thesis concerns the social gospel, a liberal Protestant movement that enjoyed its heyday in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The thesis argues that the movement’s two most prominent figures, Washington Gladden and Walter Rauschenbusch, expressed an antipathy toward immigrants and a paternalistic attitude toward foreign nations and cultures. These attitudes then laid the foundation for contemporary anti-immigrant sentiments and US foreign policy. Gladden and Rauschenbusch’s rhetoric contains sentiments which act as a precursor to various elements of American exceptionalism, from missionary activity abroad to liberal attitudes toward the Middle East after 9/11. These links have …

The Creation Of Political Survival Strategies By Black Collegiate Women On Virginia’S Predominantly White Campuses, Maya Jenkins

Student Research Submissions

The University of Mary Washington is a liberal arts institution founded in 1908 as a normal and industrial school for women (Our History - About UMW, 2015). Because of its small size, Mary Washington was historically known as Virginia’s “undiscovered gem” (Boyer, 2011). Mary Washington is described as a place built to support the “innovative, passionate, intellectual, and genuine” (Boyer, 2011). However, in 2020, the deaths of Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade and a racial protest that took place near the college’s campus caused many Black collegiate women at Mary Washington to question if their university was built to support …

Reforming The United States’ Currency Production, William Cather

Student Research Submissions

Since the 1980s, the debate about the one-cent piece’s production and use has been discussed throughout relatively recent Congressional history; and has involved economic, financial, industry-based, as well as numismatic groups to weigh in on the topic. The question arises: Why have other countries successfully changed their lower-denomination currency and converted their economic system into one that incorporates cash-rounding while the United States has struggled to do so?

By observing international examples of the obsoletion of low-denomination coinage and the implementation of cash-rounding, the proposed economic and financial reform has proved to work as an economically-sound alternative to the current …

Humanitarian Intervention And American Public Opinion: An Analysis To Intervene, Alexia Inge

Student Research Submissions

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The Influence Of Right-Wing Media On Political Racialization, Alex Regan

Student Research Submissions

The rise of right-wing media in the United States begs the question of how it is impacting American political culture. The recently increasing rate of political polarization in the United States, specifically along racial lines, poses a potential issue for American democracy. Through comparative analysis of Fox News and their counterparts in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, this study seeks to address what specifically has caused Fox to be so successful in reproducing racial propaganda.

The Ethics Of Care And The U.S. Covid-19 Pandemic Response, Samantha Treveline Barrett

Student Research Submissions

Throughout the pandemic, many conservatives like President Donald Trump lacked emotional sensitivity in regards to the millions of lives affected by COVID-19. They believed themselves to be too strong for the virus to take them down, and viewed those who wore masks as weak and afraid. Unlike Democrats, Republican governors entrusted their constituents to take necessary safety precautions and avoided statewide mask mandates, vaccine requirements, and lockdowns. Their policies and rhetoric demonstrated the overlap in harmful masculine traits and the conservative values of self-sufficiency and independence. Using a case study method, this paper analyzes the role of gender in a …

The Relationship Between Late Night, Twitter, And Political Literacy In 2020, Sally Burkley

Student Research Submissions

Political humor has played a role in politics since ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. From plays to newspaper comics to late night comedy, these bits of political criticism and commentary on current events have been there to provide the public with relief, reinforcement of views, and in some cases information. Since the late 2000s, social media started to take on a similar role of providing reactions to political commentary, but rather than a television network and professionally crafted scripts, it is any person who possesses an account and may write up to 280 characters. Previous research has looked at political …

Two Jews, Three Opinions: An Exploration Of Young American Jewish Perspectives On Israel, Kate Seltzer

Student Research Submissions

In recent decades, there has been a lot of speculation and general hand-wringing from Jewish leadership about American Jews, and particularly young American Jews, and their increasing apathy towards Israel. Jewish leaders, both at the individual and institutional level, worry that there seems to be a clear generational gap in concern for and engagement with Israel as a central feature of Jewish identity. This research will aim to gauge the extent to which this is true and whether colleges are impacting American Jews’ views on Israel. I will conduct a series of extensive interviews with Jewish high school and college …

This Is America: Comparing The U.S. And Foreign Media Press Coverage Of African American Foreign Policy Officials, Nina Burges

Student Research Submissions

There is universal recognition that the foreign policy making talent in the United States is woefully unrepresentative of America’s vibrant minority populations, and more is required to attract minorities to pursue public service careers representing the United States abroad and accurately reflect its diversity. However, little attention is paid towards the international response to America’s diversity as it relates to when people of color represent the United States as diplomats, foreign service officers and White House foreign policy officials, as well as in less official capacities as scholars and humanitarian workers. These concerns assume new relevance against the backdrop of …

Crude Measures: Assessing The Success And Failure Of Maximum Pressure Campaigns, Dillon Schweers

Student Research Submissions

The Trump Administration implemented a series of intense economic sanctions against the Venezuelan government in 2019 and 2020 in an effort to oust autocratic President Nicolas Maduro. After two years of the U.S. targeting the Venezuelan oil industry with these measures, Maduro remains entrenched in power. Alternatively, similar measures against Iran were ultimately successful in compelling the Islamic Republic to participate in negotiations that led to the Iran Nuclear Deal of 2015. The student researcher endeavors to answer why sanctions were successful in Iran, but not Venezuela. By analyzing each case from three perspectives (i.e., target-centric approach, third party-centric approach, …

How Expansive Is Essential? Restriction Of Abortion Services In The United States During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Eva Katherine Waszak

Student Research Submissions

This paper will discuss U.S. state responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of restricting women’s access to reproductive health care and bodily autonomy. The majority of states delivered executive orders where governors made clear their plan to either uphold the principles related to reproductive health care and freedom or attack them. Almost half of the states discussed reproductive health services in either their stay-at-home orders or essential procedures orders. While the right to an abortion exists at the national level, states vary widely in their regulation of the procedure. For the purposes of this project, I will focus …

Australia And The United States: The Role Of Secondary Allies In Burden-Sharing, Rachel Mcvicker

Student Research Submissions

Modern conflict is rarely fought bilaterally, instead many states share the burden of war. Multilateralism adds legitimacy to, and potentially reduces the cost of, the mission and so the major powers recruit its allies to fight wars with them. Conflict is costly for all states involved. As a result, the decision to join the effort is not simple. The smaller allies that major powers ask to join in must justify the cost of that conflict. Some states always fight alongside its major allies, others have more variability in its commitments. This paper aims to find the reasons why states, specifically …

Felony Disenfranchisement Through Rousseau's Social Contract, Blake Donohue

Student Research Submissions

In America, 1 in 13 African Americans are disenfranchised. The history of felony disenfranchisement, as well as the cases often used when discussing the constitutionality of felon disenfranchisement policies, aligns with the history of racial discrimination in the United States. The disproportionate impact of felony disenfranchisement laws on African Americans makes such laws invalid if analyzed through Rousseau’s social contract.

Trump’S 2016 Campaign, The Republican Party, And Trade, John Huebler

Student Research Submissions

This paper explores the 2016 Trump campaign's position on trade. It starts from the perspective of a Republican Party that has traditionally focused on promoting free trade and an executive branch that had been seemingly designed structurally to promote free trade. The Trump campaign was a drastic change in both standards as it successfully advocated more protectionist positions. The paper looked at all of Trump's 2016 campaign documents and compiled ones focusing on trade. Through a qualitative analysis, this is contrasted against previous Republican presidential campaigns. Ultimately, the Trump administration had pursued a novel strategy of using a protectionist platform …

Challenging Bosnian Women’S Identity As Rape Victims: The Fetishization Of Sexual Violence In Post-Conflict Discourse, Rebecca Jacobi

Student Research Submissions

How does one call attention to the gender dimensions of war violence or postwar inequalities without reproducing images of passive female victimhood and support for patriarchal notions of the protection of women? In the case of the Bosnian War, because of the large scale of sexual violence and the attention focused on this violence, Bosnian women have been stereotyped and relegated to the role of rape victim. Although women suffered from grave violations of human rights, this stereotypical portrayal is not adequate, and neglects the active role played in the perpetration of violence by some women. It also neglects women’s …

The History And Workings Of Virginia’S Community Services Boards: An In-Depth Look At Rappahannock Area Community Services Board, Molly Gehman

Student Research Submissions

This thesis studies the historic development of mental health care in the Commonwealth of Virginia and conducts a detailed examination of the mandated mental health services provided by the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board (RACSB). To conduct this review, the mental health services provided by RACSB were compared with two other Community Services Boards (CSBs), the Loudoun County CSB and the Dickenson County CSB. Results show the importance of community health care and jail diversion programs when compared with the historic mental health care methods of institutionalization and imprisonment. Results also show that health care in Virginia is operated out …

Latinas In Congress: Lack Of Party Support And Disproportionate Underrepresentation, Rebecca Fitzgerald

Student Research Submissions

Latinx are the fastest-growing demographic group in the United States, and as such many researchers have looked into Latinas as political candidates and as voters, establishing that Latinas in particular run stronger candidacies than their male counterparts (Bejarano, 2014; Holman & Schneider, 2018; Ocampo & Ray, 2019). Despite this, Latinas hold fewer than 25 percent of seats than Latinos in all levels of government, with their success concentrated under the Democratic Party (Bialik, 2019; Vital Statistics, 2019). In order to determine whether a partisan-gap is present in recruiting and supporting Latina candidates, I looked at four Congressional House primary election …

Presidential Power Reconsidered: A Contemporary Look At Neustadtian Bargaining, Jeremy Engel

Student Research Submissions

What is the nature of presidential power? What are its limits, and what recognizable forms does it take? These were the questions the late Richard Neustadt attempted to answer in his seminal work Presidential Power and the Modern American Presidents. Neustadt’s prescience and the eloquence he brought to discussions of the presidency inform much of the contemporary literature on the subject. That said, his book was published at a decidedly different moment in American politics, necessitating a reevaluation of many of his core arguments. This paper explores the modern presidential-congressional dynamic, focusing on the development of the legislative presidency and …

The Resilience Of Clientelism In Menem's Argentina, Marina Castro-Meirelles

Student Research Submissions

This paper explains the resilience of clientelism in Argentina from 1989 to 1999, or the years of Carlos Menem’s presidency. Menem enacted sweeping neoliberal reforms, which leading theories predicted would extinguish clientelism. Nevertheless, it persisted throughout the decade. The paper first reconstructs the concept of clientelism, presenting a definition of the phenomenon. It then tests and finds support for two hypotheses to explain its resilience. The first, from the leading school of thought in the literature, predicts that the use of clientelism decreases with an increase in competition. I suggest a new hypothesis that Menem’s position relative to the Peronist …

The U.S. War On Drugs In Latin America: What Is The Method To The Madness?, Kendall Parker

Student Research Submissions

Over the course of the multi-decade War on Drugs in Latin America, the United States has continued to implement a supply-side focused strategy that has failed in nearly all facets. Neither the production, supply, or transit of illegal drugs has been reduced, nor has domestic demand decreased. However, majority of federal counterdrug funding is dedicated to the continuation of the same policies. Costly supply-side policies that do not achieve goals present a conundrum that begs resolution. Why has the United States continued to pursue a counterdrug strategy in Latin America that has been largely futile? This paper tests for the …

The Implementation Of Religious Literacy Curricula In American Public Schools, Natalie Lemay

Student Research Submissions

Religious literacy is defined as a basic level of knowledge and understanding of major world religions and beliefs. Most of the literature on the subject agrees that students benefit from exposure to other religions, both civically and mentally. The Religious Freedom Institute of the Newseum has created a curriculum in order to bring nonpartisan religious education back into public schools with the goal of increasing tolerance for communities of different faiths. The curriculum, titled the Georgia 3Rs project, is being piloted in Georgia, a predominantly Christian evangelical state. In my thesis, I study the effectiveness of prior examples of religious …

Political Participation, Efficacy, And Community Organizing In Appalachia: How A Marginalized Region Makes Sense Of Their Circumstances, Christopher Cassingham

Student Research Submissions

Appalachians are portrayed in the media and scholarship as politically fatalistic, but in reality the region has a rich history of non-traditional political action. Why are Appalachians portrayed this way, and what are they doing today to reclaim their agency? In this paper I examine the ways popular culture has shaped our understanding of Appalachia and Appalachians, as well as how we perceive them as political beings; I also briefly discuss the history of the treatment of Appalachians by coal companies. This paper also examines previous scholarship on political participation in Appalachia in order to provide context for the rest …

The Status Of Socialism In Contemporary Us Politics, Noah Gardner

Student Research Submissions

This paper examines the status of socialism in contemporary US politics. Historically, socialists have struggled to garner much popularity or political success in America. However, recent events suggest that socialism has increased in popularity. This project first analyzes the history of socialism in the United States and identifies a number of factors that have inhibited its success. The project then analyzes public opinion data on reactions to the term “socialism” and opinion on universal healthcare. This data analysis breaks down public opinion by different demographic factors to determine which Americans are most likely to express support for socialism and proposals …