Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Participatory Budgeting: Diffusion And Outcomes Across The World, Brian Wampler, Janette Hartz-Karp

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this special issue of the Journal of Public Deliberation, multiple faces of Participatory Budgeting programs are revealed. The articles demonstrate that there is no standardized set of “best practices” that governments are adopting, but there are a broader set of principles that are adapted by local governments to meet local circumstances. Adopt and adapt appears to be the logic behind many PB programs.

Participatory Budgeting: Core Principles And Key Impacts, Brian Wampler

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay is a reflection piece. I identify key principles at the core of how PB functions and to discuss the scope of change we might expect to see generated by these institutions. I move beyond the idea that there is a specific model or set of “best practices” that define PB. Rather, it is most fruitful to conceptualize PB as a set of principles that can generate social change. The weaker the adherence to these principles, the less social change generated. The second purpose of the essay is to reflect on the impacts generated by PB. How do these …

Roger Scruton: A Political Philosophy Study Guide, 2006-2012, Steven A. Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Pierre Manent: Democracy Without Nations? The Fate Of Self-Government In Europe Study Guide, 2012, Steven A. Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

John Fonte: Sovereignty Or Submission: Will Americans Rule Themselves Or Be Ruled By Others? Study Guide, 2012, Steven A. Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn: Leftism: From De Sade And Marx To Hitler And Marcuse Study Guide, C. 1990-2012, Steven A. Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. And David A. Welch, Understanding Global Conflicts And Cooperation, 9th Ed. Study Guide, 2012, Steven A. Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Comparative Antitrust Federalism: Review Of Cengiz, Antitrust Federalism In The Eu And The Us, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This brief essay reviews Firat Cengiz’s book Antitrust Federalism in the EU and the US (2012), which compares the role of federalism in the competition law of the European Union and the United States. Both of these systems are “federal,” of course, because both have individual nation-states (Europe) or states (US) with their own individual competition provisions, but also an overarching competition law that applies to the entire group. This requires a certain amount of cooperation with respect to both territorial reach and substantive coverage.

Cengiz distinguishes among “markets,” “hierarchies,” and “networks” as forms of federalism. Markets are the least …

Human Rights Policy Paper: Rape As A Tactic Of War, Sarah Fitzgerald

Global Studies Student Scholarship

This paper reports on rape used as a tactic of war, outlining the scope of the problem and introducing policy options to address the issue on a global scale. Policy options targeted at relief services include increasing direct aid through funding fistula surgeries, building rural hospitals, and providing skills training for women awaiting surgery. Additional policy options addressing the problem at its root include legislative changes to stop impunity at the International Criminal Court, revising the Convention on Genocide to include sex and gender, utilization of devices such as the Rape aXe, and changing the culture of misogyny through educational …

Is The Daily Show Bad For Democracy? An Analysis Of Cynicism And Its Significance, Evan Bartlett

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

In recent years, satirical news programs like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart have emerged as an important development in contemporary American society, culture, and politics. Critics have argued that The Daily Show has a negative impact on the political attitudes of American citizens by making them cynical about government and the political process as a whole. As a result of these attitudes, they argue, citizens are less apt to participate in politics and, in turn, this behavior is detrimental to American democracy. The purpose of this research project is to explore the debate over whether or not The Daily …

Struggling Recovery And Economic Policy Uncertainty: Testimony Before The Joint Revenue Hearing, House And Senate Ways And Means Committees, Massachusetts State House, Boston, Ma, Christian Weller

Public Policy and Public Affairs Faculty Publication Series

The U.S. economy is in the fourth year of a recovery that started in June 2009. The fact that the economy is in recovery, even modestly, is something of a miracle given how stacked the deck is against it.

This is absolutely unique in American economic history: There has never been a recovery without the housing market expanding substantially as well; There has never been a recovery with state and local governments shrinking for three years in a row; There has never been a recovery with households owing, on average, well more than 100 percent of their after-tax income in …

The Rise Of Religious Parties In Turkey And India, Hannah Donovan

Political Science Student Scholarship

This project examines the rise of religious parties in secular democracies. In both Turkey and India, religious parties have enjoyed electoral successes (and failures). While religion is a significant issue to voters, it is oftentimes the persistence of economic problems that leads to the rise and fall of religious parties. The impact of coalition governments, change in political rhetoric, and relationship between government and religion in both countries are also analyzed and contrasted.

Magee, J. Harry (Sc 66), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 66. Letter, 23 December 1868, written by J. Harry Magee, Washington, D.C., to Dr. Albert Covington, Bowling Green, Kentucky, regarding the record of the U. S. Senate impeachment proceedings against President Andrew Johnson.

Jfk: Covered And Smothered, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

"If we could run the Zapruder film in reverse, patch up the president’s gruesome head wound, send the bullets flying back to the chambers whence they came, return the assassins to their sinister underworld and back up the Lincoln convertible so that Jack and Jackie are once again waving to the crowds in the Texas sunshine, then we could also walk backwards through the last 30 years, becoming younger and more hopeful, forgetting tragedies one after the other, arriving finally at a point of innocent stasis where we can stand forever watching the American sunrise with immortal delight. But we …

Troubling Questions About Obama’S Drone Warfare, Nicholas Hayes

University Chair in Critical Thinking Publications

No abstract provided.

Social And Adversarial Varieties Of Democracy: Which Produces Fewer Criminals?, Devin K. Joshi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article explores the relationship between two prominent varieties of democracy and the size of a country’s prison population. Theoretically, it proposes that social democracies increase social and economic equality which reduces both the “demand for crime” and the number of criminals. Adversarial democracies, on the other hand, generate higher levels of inequality and insecurity that lead to higher levels of crime. Utilizing a structured, focused comparison of Nordic social democracies and Anglo-American adversarial democracies complemented by cross-sectional multiple regression analysis of twenty industrialized democracies, I find empirical support for both of these conjectures. A major implication of this study …

Judicial Innovation And Sexual Harassment Doctrine In The U.S. Court Of Appeals., Laura P. Moyer, Holley Takersley

Faculty Scholarship

The determination that sexual harassment constituted “discrimination based on sex” under Title VII was first made by the lower federal courts, not Congress. Drawing from the literature on policy diffusion, this article examines the adoption of hostile work environment standards across the U.S. Courts of Appeals in the absence of controlling Supreme Court precedent. The results bolster recent findings about the influence of female judges on their male colleagues and suggest that in addition to siding with female plaintiffs, female judges also helped to shape legal rules that promoted gender equality in the workplace.

Understanding Africa’S China Policy: A Test Of Dependency Theory And A Study Of African Motivations In Increasing Engagement With China, Nkemjika E. Kalu

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

African states are increasingly engaging with China--politically, socially and economically--especially through the machinations of the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). This dissertation asserts that Africans are willing partners of the Chinese, motivated by their state-centric belief that engagement with China is in their national interest. This assertion contradicts the assumption of most literature to date that appears to borrow from the logic of dependency theory and presents African nations as pawns, subject to the demands of a dominant and exploitative China, who is benefiting at Africa’s expense. Economic trends from the decade before the launch of the FOCAC and the …

The Rancor Of Republicans, The Diatribe Of Democrats A Social Network Analysis Of Partisan Interconnectivity On Facebook, Sean Langille

Masters Theses

The Internet has played a more active role in shaping modern American political communication. With the increased popularity of social networking through websites like Facebook, more are taking to the Internet to engage in civic dialogue. This study will explore how the exchange of socially networked images, texts, and audio between Democrats and Republicans affect beliefs, behaviors and perceptions. Utilizing qualitative methodologies, the researcher interviewed ten (10) registered democrats and ten (10) registered republicans. The participants were basked ten questions and ten follow up questions. The study applied a social network analysis to evaluate how socially networked dialogue between Republicans …

How Might Ecologists Make The World Safe For Biodiversity Without Getting Fired?, David Johns

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay raises the following questions: What if conservation success depends less on speaking truth to power than on organizing a political force that can bring more pressure to bear on decision makers than their opponents? But what if natural scientists, by virtue of their knowledge, passion, commitment, are pretty much the only group that can be trusted with the fate of biodiversity and leading humankind out of their destructive ways? What if begging policy makers to do the right thing means barren oceans, the end of many species, and the end of wild places (not to mention a more …

Processing Facial Emotions: An Eeg Study Of The Differences Between Conservatives And Liberals And Across Political Participation, Karl Evan Giuseffi

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Behavioral differences have been reported between conservatives and liberals when categorizing facial expressions, yet no study explores potential differences in the manner in which the two groups process facial expressions, let alone how partisanship contributes or how political engagement may vary with brain processing of facial expressions. In this context, processing refers to brain patterns following exposure to a facial expression and participants’ subsequent attention to the presented facial expressions. This thesis addresses the question of whether political temperament is associated with differences in neural processing. Research subjects participated in an emotion discrimination task while event-related potentials (ERP) were captured …

The Striking Success Of The National Labor Relations Act, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

Although often viewed as a dismal failure, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) has been remarkably successful. While the decline in private sector unionization since the 1950s is typically viewed as a symbol of this failure, the NLRA has achieved its most important goal: industrial peace.

Before the NLRA and the 1947 Taft-Hartley Amendments, our industrial relations system gave rise to frequent and violent strikes that threatened the nation’s stability. For example, in the late 1870s, the Great Railroad Strike spread throughout a number of major cities. In Pittsburg alone, strikes claimed 24 lives, nearly 80 buildings, and over 2,000 …

The 2008 Us Presidential Election And New Digital Technologies: Political Campaigns As Social Movements And The Significance Of Collective Identity, Stephanie Takaragawa, Victoria Carty

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

The growing role of the Internet social networking sites (SNS) has served as a flash point for debate about the democratization of information, particularly in light of their perceived roles in the 2008 presidential election. This horizontal sharing of information undoubtedly facilitated the revival of the youth vote and volunteerism in many ways mimicking traditional grassroots approaches. While the role of the Internet SNS in mobilization efforts and information-sharing cannot be overstated, its effectiveness in creating a new “public sphere,” or transforming traditional electoral campaign strategies and communicative practices must be closely examined before generalizations about the democratization of media …

Aesthetic Constructions Of Korea Nationalism: Spectacle, Politics And History, Yooil Bae

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

South Africa’S First Five Years On The United Nations Human Rights Council, Eduard Christiaan Jordaan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In June 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) adopted its first resolution on sexual orientation and human rights. Resolution 17/19 expressed grave concern at violence and discrimination committed against people because of their sexual orientation and tasked the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to report on such abuses. In a body marred by regional bloc voting, Resolution 17/19 passed with support from states in all five of the official regions of the UN. South Africa was widely praised for leading such a progressive resolution through the Council, especially in the face of considerable pressure from African and …

The Hanford Advisory Board: A Case Study In Democracy, Technology, And Representation, Alexander Sager, Alex Zakaras

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Highly technical policy decisions present daunting challenges for democracy. In order to hold public officials accountable, citizens must be able to see how policy decisions stand to affect their interests. If they are unable to do so, they can find themselves exposed to bureaucratic domination through the discretionary power of bureaucrats, scientists, or policy experts. One of the major tasks of empirically informed democratic theory is to analyze and evaluate practices and institutions that use public participation to try to render highly technical public decision-making more accountable to the public, and therefore more legitimate. This paper presents a case study …

Obama Stands On The Verge Of A ‘Truman Moment’ In History, Nicholas Hayes

University Chair in Critical Thinking Publications

No abstract provided.

The Deng Xiaoping Legacy: Leading Changes And Transforming China, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

No leader of the 20th century had made greater impact than Deng Xiaoping. Under the late Chinese leader's tenure, which lasted from 1978 to 1992, hundreds of millions of Chinese were lifted from poverty. The chaos that was the Cultural Revolution gave way to steadfast economic development that turned China into a key player in the world economy.

Review Of Common Sense: A Political History, Don Herzog

Reviews

This is a completely charming book: smart, literate, subtle, putting pressure in all the right places. Rosenfeld wants to show that surprisingly much of modern political history--the rise of democracy; its anxious and baleful critics; the turn against priestcraft, statecraft, and babbling intellectuals-- is distilled in invocations of common sense. She's calmly and confidently in control of disparate and illuminating material, from England to Amsterdam, Philadelphia to Paris, the seventeenth century to the twentieth. Even readers not persuaded of some of her central claims will enjoy feasting on the often hilarious primary sources she lays out.

Towards A Communicative Theory Of International Law, Timothy L. Meyer

Scholarly Works

Does international law's effectiveness require a clear distinction between law and non-law? This essay, which reviews Jean d'Aspremont's Formalism and the Sources of International Law, argues the answer is no. Ambiguity about the legal nature of international instruments has important benefits. Clarity in the law may encourage states to do the minimum necessary to comply, while some uncertainty about what the law requires may induce states to take extra efforts to ensure they are in compliance. Ambiguity in the law also promotes dynamic change, an important feature in rapidly developing areas of the law such as international environmental law and …