Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Riding The Populist Web: Contextualizing The Five Star Movement (M5s) In Italy, Liza Lanzone, Dwayne Woods

Department of Political Science Faculty Publications

This article focuses on three mechanisms to explain the rise of populist movements across Europe. They are politicization of resentment, exploitation of social cleavages, and polarization of resentment and feelings of non-representation. We conceptualize populism as a strategic power game aiming to transform potential majorities into real ones by creating or reframing social cleavages. Our theoretical model is used to explain the rise of the Five Star Movement (M5S). Beppe Grillo’s M5S gained notoriety on the national political scene in Italy just before the 2013 elections and succeeded in getting nearly 25 percent of the overall vote. Moreover, it was …

Poverty Within Nation-States: The Impact Of Corruption, Trade, Income Inequality, Population Growth, Foreign Aid, And Military Expenditure, Mustafa Karapinar

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Theoretical approaches to development have marginalized poverty and the individual from the developmental debates. Instead, these approaches place the state as the conventional unit of development and tended to address poverty at the societal level. In these respects, these approaches have neglected how development affects poverty at the individual level.

This study criticizes one of these approaches, the modernization theory of Development, and analyzes the relationship between poverty and some economic, political, and social factors. These factors include openness to trade, foreign aid, military expenditure, income inequality, corruption, and population. There have been several studies examining the relationship between poverty …

Opportunism In Ugandan Ngos: A Randomized Field Experiment, Eric Reuben Smith

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Corruption undermines the effectiveness of international development. The financial integrity of non-governmental organizations (NGO) can be improved by donor-to-organization contact, but foreign donors rarely travel to countries such as Uganda. This project involved a randomized design to compare the size of project bids by NGO management when approached by potential donors (foreigners) or donor representatives (Ugandan citizens). Local donor representatives were more likely to be denied information during an in-person visit than the foreigners visiting NGOs. Otherwise, foreign potential donors were provided with information that was the same as local representatives, except in 6 instances in which bids were substantially …

The Public Choice Theory In Public Opinion, Dorji Tshoden

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The World Bank defines corruption as “the abuse of public office for private gain” and while this social phenomenon exists at many levels of institutions, I will be focusing on corruption in the American political system in this analysis. This paper seeks to focus on the impact of one’s distrust in the government and how they perceive the economy and corruption in the government. Therefore I will be testing the subsequent hypothesis of: people who view the government officials to be corrupt, will be more likely to be of the notion that the state of the economy is bad than …

Measures Of Corruption, Riccardo Pelizzo

riccardo pelizzo

The presentation provides an overview of the measures of corruption that can be used to track corruption across countries and over time.

Political Connections And Firm Value: Evidence From The Regression Discontinuity Design Of Close Gubernatorial Elections, Quoc-Anh Do, Yen Teik Lee, Bang D. Nguyen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using the regression discontinuity design of close gubernatorial elections in the U.S., we identify a significant and positive impact of the social networks of corporate directors and politicians on firm value. Firms connected to elected governors increase their value by 3.89%. Political connections are more valuable for firms connected to winning challengers, for smaller and financially dependent firms, in more corrupt states, in states of connected firms’ headquarters and operations, and in closer, smaller, and active networks. Post-election, firms connected to the winner receive significantly more state procurement contracts and invest more than do firms connected to the loser.

Do Oil Economies In Sub-Sahara Africa, Rebecca Girma

Dissertations and Theses

The African continent provides majority of the world’s raw material for technology and fine jewelry. Countries dependent on their extractive industries lag behind on developmental goals. Their GDPs are high as well as their national poverty levels. This paper explores the factors in which a nation lacks development when it is financially wealthy to do so. There are similar patterns in nations where resource curse has occurred. What is the key to sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa? Is solving corruption and migrating away from a market dependent on primary exports the answer? Can they transition from the ancient patrimonial state …

Corruption, Responsiveness, And Political Reform In Brazil (1994-2014), Mauricio Izumi, Patrick Silva

Patrick Silva

Corruption is a frequent problem associated with developing countries. Brazil is not an exception; on the contrary, recent periods have been marked by major scandals. For the first time, president partisans were formally prosecuted and arrested because of corruption related crimes. The media played a central role in this process. In this paper, we examine the media role over legislative behavior of Brazilian senators during the period of the largest trial for corruption related crimes. We analyze the frequency of topics related to corruption on the media and how it affects speeches on the floor about corruption and political reform. …

Gender, Corruption, And Culture: Evidence From The American States, Luke Bell

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

In recent years, several influential studies have reported that high levels of female representation in national legislatures seem to correspond with low levels of countrywide corruption. Scholars have expressed excitement at the prospect that simply adding women to government will “diminish the need for a painful, expensive, and politically difficult process of rooting out corruption via oversight and prosecution” (Esarey and Chirillo 2013: 364). Some governments have launched initiatives to increase the number of women in positions of public responsibility as a means of combating corrupt behavior. Peru, for example, recently created an allwomen police division in an attempt to …

Public Corruption In Liberian Government, Stephen H. Gobewole

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

There is a widespread public perception of corruption in Liberia's election process, yet there is little documentation on the characteristics of voters and their perceptions of electoral corruption. The purpose of this correlational study was to explore the relationship between gender, ethnicity, physical location, and perceptions about political activity during the 2005 national election. Roderick Chisolm's conceptualization of the internalist view of justification served as the theoretical construct. Data were acquired from the Afrobarometer survey (n = 1,200), which used a representative cross-sectional sample design, and were subjected to cross-tabulation analysis, a chi-square test, and a correlation analysis. The results …