Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Economic Interdependence, Power, And Peace: A Rationalist Study Of Commercial Liberalism, Yuleng Zeng

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies whether and how economic interdependence promotes peace, focusing on three intertwined strategic questions originating from states’ incentives to hurt adversaries and disincentives to hurt themselves during international crisis bargaining. States that can exert substantial economic pains on potential rivalries also have strong incentives to bluff (i.e., to make claims on things they are not willing to fight for). It is therefore puzzling (1) whether bluffing makes conflict either more likely given there will be more incidents of crises or less likely given potential targets are more willing to concede; (2) once in conflict, whether states should cut …

Institutional Form And Its Influence On Instability Following The Assassination Of A Head Of State, Ashlee Mcgill

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The period following an assassination is one of fear and uncertainty for citizens of a nation after their leader has been assassinated. However, different nations experience assassinations differently; while some collapse and result in failed states, other nations have seen leaders rise to power. Thus, I examine how institutional forms—democracy, autocracy, and anocracy—influence and structure how a country experiences instability following the assassination of a head of state. I do this through a qualitative case study of three assassinations: John F. Kennedy of the United States in 1963; Rafael Trujillo of the Dominica Republic in 1961; and José Antonio “Chichi” …

Not Just Stone And Metal Message Effects And Symbols Of The Confederacy In The Contemporary South, Andrew D. Searles

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Social Trust And Soft Power: The Role Of Social Trust In Democratic Countries’ Soft Power Use, Judit Trunkos

Theses and Dissertations

We have learned about democracies’ peaceful behaviour but we know relatively little about why some democracies are more peaceful and use more soft power instruments than others. I argue that contrary to competing theories that link soft power use to budget size or institutions, it is the variation in the public’s social trust that drives the variation in peaceful behaviour. Individual’s social trust toward peaceful foreign policies are shaped by their core beliefs about trusting other people, which vary across democracies. I argue that leader’s with more trusting populations will be more likely to use soft power instruments becasue they …

Global Fields, Institutional Emergence, And The Regulation Of Transnational Corporations, Alwyn Lim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

World society theory has developed to become a major sociological perspective on globalization, focusing on the diffusion of global institutions and increasingly on the domestic impact of those institutions. Nevertheless, the emergence of global institutions has received less attention, raising questions about whether core elements of world society—institutional structures, actorhood, legitimacy—are sufficient to also explain how global institutions arise. This article proposes a “global fields” approach in which institutional emergence is conditional on the interaction between state and non-state actors around the exercise of international authority. Using archival United Nations (UN) data, I demonstrate this field approach through an historical …

A Global Regression Method For Thermal Sharpening Of Urban Land Surface Temperatures From Modis And Landsat, James. W. Wang, Winston T. L. Chow, Yi-Chen Wang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Land surface temperatures (LST) in urban landscapes are typically more heterogeneous than can be monitored by the spatial resolution of satellite-based thermal infrared sensors. Thermal sharpening (TS) methods permit the disaggregation of LST based on finer-grained multispectral information, but there is continued debate over which spectral indices are most appropriate for urban TS, and how they should be configured in a predictive regression framework. In this study, we evaluate the stability of various TS kernels with respect to LST at different spatial (Landsat 8) and diurnal (MODIS) scales, and present a new TS method, global regression for urban thermal sharpening …

Sensible Politics: Expanding From Visual Ir To Multisensory Politics, William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

One of the exciting trends in the study of international relations is the growing appreciation of the visual in global politics. It builds on path-breaking work on aesthetics and IR (see Bleiker 2012, Shapiro 2014), to examine how images shape our view of the world, especially in our post-literate age where people primarily get their information about international affairs from visual media. As we saw with the photograph of the dead toddler Alan Kurdi during Europe’s migration crisis in 2015, iconic photographs can put issues on the global policy agenda, even provoking Angela Merkel to allow over one million refugees …

How Does The World Bank Influence The Development Policy Priorities Of Low-Income And Lower-Middle Income Countries?, Stephen Knack, Bradley C. Parks, Ani Harutyunyan, Matthew Dilorenzo

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

This study investigates the World Bank’s use of lending and non-lending instruments to affect the policy priorities of developing countries. In a typical year, the World Bank lends more than $30 billion to its client countries. It also spends approximately $200 million on the provision of analytical and advisory products each year. However, insufficiently granular data on the nature, timing, and distribution of these analytical and advisory products and the policy priorities of client countries has made it difficult for policymakers and scholars to understand which World Bank instruments are most useful for effectuating change in the direction of government …

Constructions Of Democratic Citizenship And Civic Education In Tunisia, Abigail Smith

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Although Tunisia has made significant progress in establishing procedural democracy since the 2011 revolution, the state still faces significant challenges in consolidating their new spirit of democracy throughout society. This trouble includes difficulty fostering participation from its citizens, particularly among youth aged 18-30. This article hypothesizes that these difficulties stems largely from the state’s failure to construct a concept of Tunisian citizenship in line with democratic ideologies. Citizenship construction is considered as a political science concept that describes the mechanisms by which states relate with their citizenry with the goal of defining citizen interactions with the government and national community. …

The Key Factors Driving Ccp Opposition To Taiwanese Independence, Connor Warshauer

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The CCP strongly opposes a formal declaration of independence from Taiwan, and has threatened military force should Taiwan take that step. This paper seeks to explain the underlying reasons for the CCP’s aggressive policy. To do so, it uses a two-part methodology composed of a comprehensive engagement with existing secondary sources from the academic literature and four new interviews with experts in the field. The paper considers three main explanations for China’s opposition to independence: nationalism, international geostrategic factors, and factors of domestic politics. It concludes that domestic politics, and specifically the CCP’s perception that independence threatens its claim to …

Geopolitics And The Digital Domain: How Cyberspace Is Impacting International Security, Georgia Wood

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The digital domain is the emerging environment for which the internet and data connectivity exists. This new domain is challenging the traditional place for geopolitics to exist, and creating new challenges to international relations. The use of cyberweapons through direct cyberattacks, such as the possibility of an attack on the U.S. power grid, or misinformation campaigns, such as the one launched by Russia against the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, can expand the international threat landscape. While these new threats increase, states are widely not prepared to address the new challenges in the digital domain. This paper will use three primary …

Linguistic Differences In Swiss Cantons And Its Role On The National Identity, Karen Lin

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Switzerland is home to four national languages followed with a positive image on the international stage as a linguistically diverse country. In Swiss history, there has never been a record of a civil war or tensions between linguistic groups raising the question of what accounts for the national identity. The Swiss do not follow the typical definition in nationalism leading to an investigation on establishing the factors that comprise of the Swiss national identity and its effect on the political system. The results indicated linguistic diversity and the political institutions are the factors that compose the national identity creating a …

The Political Development Of Capital Punishment In The Modern Moroccan State, Mia Barr

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The modern Moroccan state seen today is very young. Having only been independent from France since 1956, the country has spent the last sixty-four years crafting its post-colonial statehood. What has emerged is a hybrid political system with powers split, however unequally, between the King and his inner circle, known as the makhzen, and the Parliament. Not only is the monarchy constitutional—meaning that its legitimacy is literally written into the primary governing document of Morocco, which had its last referendum in 2011—but it is also self-sustaining and self-legitimizing, for the monarchy uses its constitutional powers to grant itself further powers …

Casablanca Bombings, Preventing Violent Extremism, Imam Training Program, Commander Of The Faithful, Religious Pluralism, Rachel Macnow

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Following the 2003 Casablanca Bombings in Morocco there was an increased concern in protecting the physical and spiritual security of the nation. The state immediately responded by issuing a large crackdown on Salafists where many were arrested, imprisoned, and deprived of their rights. Due to the rise of extremist rhetoric in the mosques, particularly in rural and impoverished areas, the state also responded by closing any mosques they deemed to not be promoting moderate Islam and removed their imams. Out of this, a Preventing Violent Extremism Program was created that was composed of security and religious-based policies. The security policies …

Political Ideology And Media Consumption, Andrew Robinson

Georgia College Student Research Events

Politics is a far reaching phenomenon that, in essence, controls everything that we do in our daily lives without us even realizing it most of the time, and it is constantly evolving and changing to fit the narrative of the age. In this modern world, we see an increase in political radicalization, especially in the United States. Politics has become more of a social experience than a set of beliefs, with some going so far as to incorporate it into their personal identity and seek and find the ideas that best fit them. This research analyzes the effect that a …

Agency Design And State Administrators: Political Insulation And Managers’ Views Of Their Workplace, Jennifer Symonds Morrison, James C. Clinger

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

This paper examines the impact of agency design upon the perceived workplace conditions within state agencies. The research examines whether insulating features of agency structure such as independent commission status, removal of officers only for cause, and fixed terms for agency leaders are associated with perceptions by state agency managers that their work processes and environments are free of micromanagement and interference from political actors. Data are drawn from the National Administrative Studies Project III, with additional information collected from state agency web sites and statutes. We largely find that administrators working within agencies headed by officials with fixed terms …

How Much Difference Can We Make? Assessing The Change In Students’ Critical Thinking In A Private Political Science Program In Egypt, Yasmin Khodary

Political Science

The purpose of this study is to determine the change in students’ levels of critical thinking (CT) through comparing the results of second- and fourth-year students. The study also investigates the factors that are statistically significant in explaining the change, if any, in students’ CT. In doing that, the study determines whether or not the use of assessment criteria that encourage CT influences or triggers any change in students’ CT. The study employs mixed methods, combining quantitative methods with qualitative ones. Quantitative data were collected using the California CT Skills Test in order to investigate the change in students’ levels …

Responsibilities Of Citizenship During The Pandemic, Evan Barrett

Highlands College

Newspaper column by Evan Barrett published in the following newspaper:

The Missoulian, March 30, 2020

The Montana Standard, March 31, 2020

The Havre Daily News, March 30, 2020

The Havre Herald, March 30, 2020

The Great Falls Tribune, April 11, 2020

The Montana Post, April 3, 2020

The Missoula Current, April 2, 2020

Increasing Engagement With Student Government Associations: An Examination Of Student Publics, Viraj Patel

Theses and Dissertations

Student Government Associations (SGAs) are campus organizations comprised of student leaders which advocate on behalf of the student population. Participation in SGAs have proven academic, professional, and social benefits, yet the engagement in the organization has declined. This study employs Daft and Lengel’s (1986) Media Richness Theory to examine if different media affect the composition of student publics. These publics are defined using Grunig’s (1979) Situational Theory of Publics (STP). Additionally, the impact of self-efficacy, response efficacy, and perceptions of social norms on the variables in STP is also examined.

Space And Defense – Volume Eleven – Number One – Spring 2019, Space And Defense Journal

Space and Defense

No abstract provided.

Space And Defense – Volume Nine – Number One – Spring 2016, Space And Defense Journal

Space and Defense

No abstract provided.

Space And Defense – Volume Eight – Number One – Spring 2015, Space And Defense Journal

Space and Defense

No abstract provided.

Space And Defense – Volume Seven – Number One – Winter 2014, Space And Defense Journal

Space and Defense

No abstract provided.

Space And Defense – Volume Six – Number One – Fall 2012, Space And Defense Journal

Space and Defense

No abstract provided.

Space And Defense – Volume Five – Number One – Summer 2011, Space And Defense Journal

Space and Defense

No abstract provided.

Space And Defense – Volume Four – Number Two – Summer 2010, Space And Defense Journal

Space and Defense

No abstract provided.

Space And Defense – Volume Four – Number One – Winter 2010, Space And Defense Journal

Space and Defense

No abstract provided.

Space And Defense – Volume Three – Number Two – Fall 2009, Space And Defense Journal

Space and Defense

No abstract provided.

Space And Defense – Volume Three – Number One – Summer 2009, Space And Defense Journal

Space and Defense

No abstract provided.

Space And Defense – Volume Two – Number Three – Winter 2009, Space And Defense Journal

Space and Defense

No abstract provided.