Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Lawmaker Communication On Twitter By Race And Gender Of Lawmaker, Gabriel Olivier

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Destructive Draw Of Historical Determinism, Jared Russell

Honors Projects

Historical determinism can be understood as the idea that future events are predestined, usually by an esoteric or economic force. This is accompanied by the belief that there is a certain group of enlightened people that know what this future outcome will be. These people are also often convinced that it is their duty to help bring about this historical synthesis. While there are different iterations of historical determinism that can be critiqued, this paper will be focusing on some of the most influential. Specifically, the connection between a historical determinism as imagined by Hegel which was then adapted into …

End Of The Line: The Women Of Standing Rock, Gary Saul

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock (2021), directed by Shannon Kring.

How Support For Authoritarian Regimes Like Saudi Arabia Has Undermined American Soft Power, Jd Daniels

Honors Projects

The controversial state of Saudi Arabia lies at the forefront of American foreign policy debate. This article examines how and why the United States supports a country that frequently abuses human rights, and how power is involved in that decision. The most frequent reasons used are that Saudi Arabia affords the United States economic hard power (i.e. the ability to coerce others) as a trading partner, and that it acts as a strategic counterbalance to Iranian influence in the Middle East. I find that while this is likely true, it also implicates the United States in almost every violation of …

A Study Of Groupthink And Multiple Advocacy In Presidential Foreign Policy Fiascos, Ethan S. Wilt

Student Publications

As “the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations,” Presidents have almost exclusively presided over foreign policy. Modern Presidents, spanning from Eisenhower, Kennedy, Ford, Carter, and Reagan, have readily encountered foreign policy crises, with varying degrees of success. Why do some President fail while others triumph? It comes down to an assortment of factors: organizational structure, multiple advocacy, and groupthink. Organizational structure affects how information is disseminated and decisions are made. Multiple advocacy brings out all important interests during deliberations. Groupthink paralyzes deliberations by causing conformity, cohesion, and replaces critical thinking with irrationality. These frameworks …

Strategic Litigation And The Evolution Of Regional Human Rights Norms: Cases From Germany And The Netherlands, Cole Kovarik

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This study seeks to fill gaps in our understanding of how private actors participate in international human rights politics by examining civil society involvement in European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) cases against long-standing democracies. Descriptive analysis of an exhaustive data set of instances of civil society organization (CSO) participation in ECtHR cases against Germany and The Netherlands is complemented by a comparative case study analysis of networks of organizations that mobilized around German and Dutch cases concerning Articles 8 (right to privacy) and 10 (freedom of expression). The data suggest that civil society organizations not only appear before the …

Polarization: A 21st Century Challenge To Global Democracy, Tim Biocic

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The purpose of this paper is to identify the issue of political polarization as it relates not only to American politics, but also to see how the issues in political polarization that exist in the United States are also experienced in other democracies around the world. The paper takes a look at what some of the different theories are about where polarization originates, who some of the leading scholars are in the debate over polarization, what institutional mechanisms contribute to the problem of polarization, and then finally what polarization looks like elsewhere in the world.

When it comes to the …

Catholic Voting: The Influence Of Abortion, Benjamin O’Brien

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Throughout the history of the United States, voting trends in American elections have evolved. One example of this is how the Catholic vote has changed since the 1960s. Factors such as race, gender, economics, and religious values may impact voting trends. These factors may have some impact on the shift in the Catholic voting trend. To determine this, I studied how Catholic voters feel about certain issues and how their responses may differ by income level, race, and gender. In my analysis I used data from the Congressional Campaign Election Study, which was gathered by a survey of voters in …

Partisan Trust In Social Media: Who Trusts The News On Social Media And Who Does Not?, Kenneth Morris

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Social Media has changed the way Americans and people around the world receive their news. This advancement in media has political scientists questioning who trusts the information they read on social media sites. The PEW Research Center provides excellent data from a public opinion survey they conducted in 2019. My analysis of the data found that found that the older generations (50 years and older) are more warry of the news they receive on social media. More specifically, the older Republicans have less trust than the other demographics. With President Trump’s Twitter account being permanently banned from the site in …

Breaking The Judicial Glass Ceiling: The Appointment Of Women To High Courts Worldwide, Maria C. Escobar-Lemmon, Valerie J. Hoekstra, Alice J. Kang, Miki Caul Kittilson

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

The salience of judicial institutions in democratic and nondemocratic countries has increased, making it important to have women on these powerful and visible decision-making bodies. Yet, women have only recently gained entrance to peak judicial bodies including constitutional and supreme courts. The appointment of the first woman to a high court is a historic landmark, breaking traditional ideas of who can and should be on the court. Using a global, longitudinal data set we show that certain explanatory factors matter differently in wealthy, stable democracies and in developing countries. The method of selecting high court justices exerts influence in wealthy, …

Reclaiming Civics: Negotiating Priorities For Civic Education Pedagogy, Skylar Thoma , '21

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

Civic education has always been a battleground in American political debates, yet it is more necessary than ever given intense political polarization and waning participation among youth. After providing a brief synopsis of the history of civic education, this thesis considers four pedagogical frameworks available to educators as they attempt to address these challenges: civic knowledge, skills, values, and motivation. In order to address low political participation among youth, a traditional emphasis on civic knowledge is insufficient for motivating students; rather, educators should directly cultivate students' political efficacy through experiential learning programs. Meanwhile, a reliance on a common values system …

3rd Place Contest Entry: Sovereignty, Statehood, And Subjugation: Native Hawaiian And Japanese American Discourse Over Hawaiian Statehood, Nicole Saito

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Nicole Saito's submission for the 2021 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won first place. It contains her essay on using library resources, a three-page sample of her research project on the consequences that Japanese American advocacy for Hawaiian statehood had on Native Hawaiians, and her works cited list.

Nicole is a junior at Chapman University, majoring in Political Science, History, and Economics. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Robert Slayton.

Legalization Of Recreational Marijuana And Covid Vaccinations For College Students, Edward Chervenak, Anthony Licciardi

Survey Research Center Publications

The University of New Orleans’ Survey Research Center (SRC) conducted a statewide survey asking Louisiana registered voters whether they favored or opposed the legalization of the recreational use of marijuana. We also asked respondents if they thought college students should be required to receive a covid vaccination before returning to classes in person.

The Vegan Diet: A Sustainable Perspective, Mallory Colton, Megan O'Malley, Jordan Eaton

Student Work

No abstract provided.

Reification And The Critical Theory Of Contemporary Society, Chris O'Kane

Political Science Faculty Publications

This article concerns how a critical theory of reification should be conceptualized to grasp the 2007 crisis, state-imposed austerity, and the rise of right-wing authoritarian populism. It argues that Jürgen Habermas’s, Axel Honneth’s, and Georg Lukacs’s interpretations of reification cannot provide a theoretical framework for a critical social theory of these developments due to their inadequate theories of domination, crises, character formation, and historical development. It then outlines a critical theory of reification that draws on Max Horkheimer’s notion of reified authority and contemporary Marxian critical theory’s interpretation of the critique of political economy to conceive of domination, crises, and …

Human Rights As A Means To Peace: Why The Un Security Council Should Lead On Human Rights, Arden Hooper

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

United States’ Education And The Creation Of The Neoliberal Subject, Sam Stewart

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Partisan Cues, Emotion, And The Efficacy Of Corrections To Misinformation About Democratic Norms, Julia Ruth James

Honors Theses

Political misinformation and threats to democratic norms are major problems for American democracy. This thesis examines belief in misinformation about democratic norms and the efficacy of corrective information (fact-checking) in multiple circumstances, specifically analyzing the effects of emotions, partisan cues, and conspiracy thinking on the efficacy of the corrective information. To measure these effects, a survey of 45 questions was fielded through Lucid. Approximately 2000 respondents answered questions about their demographics, political beliefs/participation, and media habits. These respondents were subsequently randomly sorted into 1 of 8 experimental groups and received an emotional priming activity and a simulated news article containing …

Changing Environment. Changing Attitudes?, Lindsey Brooke Hendren

Theses and Dissertations

Most issues of hyper partisanship, such as health care, yield a strong constituency for action on the issue; the low salience of climate change, however, has failed to produce much change. In order to understand public opinion on climate change, this research draws not only on previous studies in political science, but also from psychology, sociology, communication studies, and other disciplines to provide a more comprehensive theoretical background. This dissertation emphasizes the need for more exploration in the field of political science and attempts to bridge some of the existing gaps. Findings from research such as this identify the opportunities …

The United Arab Emirates Soft Power In The International Relations Context, Ahmed Mohamed Saeed Jber Al Suwaidi

Dissertations

In the modern world, soft power is a significant concept referring to nations’ ability to influence others without the need to use force or threats. Developed nations have made a great effort to enhance their soft power practices in order to utilize this power to influence fellow nations. The United Arab Emirates’ soft power is still considered a relatively new area of practical academic discipline. Nonetheless, the UAE's soft power practices remain essential in determining its position on the global scale. To develop a soft-power strategy, objectives and needs must be outlined. To address these objectives and needs, mixed-method research …

The United States And The "Chinese Problem" Of Southeast Asia, Wen-Qing Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay examines how US Cold War policy toward all of Southeast Asia arose from American suspicions that the region's Chinese diaspora would align itself with the Chinese communists against the west. In so doing, it explores how US distrust of the Chinese diaspora fell in step with a longer imperialist tradition practised not only by the European powers for centuries, but also the Japanese Empire during its brief ascendancy during World War Two. Additionally, the essay proposes that to move beyond the bilateral studies that dominate the histories of US-Southeast Asian relations to view the region as whole, it …

Re-Thinking Region: Us-Southeast Asian Relations In The Twentieth Century, Wen-Qing Ngoei, Anne Foster

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay, co-authored with historian Anne Foster, introduces a roundtable of journal articles that explore new ways to advance the study of Southeast Asia's relations with the United States in the twentieth century. It explains the importance of examining the region, how it is of world historical importance to the big powers, and merits different and innovative analyses given its significance to current affairs.

Footprints Of A Winning Idea: Three Decades Of The Human Development Paradigm (1990-2019), Devin K. Joshi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The rise and fall of international development paradigms has long captured the interest of scholars, but interpreting whether a paradigm is winning or losing depends largely on how we measure its success. In this research note, we contribute to this debate by assessing the influence of development paradigms via comparative bibliometric analysis. Focusing on the human development and capabilities approach (HDCA) promoted by the Human Development Reports (HDRs) of the United Nations, our analysis reveals how the HDCA has emerged to become an influential paradigm of development over the last three decades. As the HDCA has fared impressively well vis-à-vis …

The Intrinsic Values Of Confucian Democracy And Dewey's Pragmatist Method, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Given the historical association of Confucianism, or rather the Ru school of thought, with autocratic government since the Han dynasty, one of the challenges for contemporary scholars of Confucianism is to interpret and reconstruct Confucianism to guard against authoritarian tendencies without surrendering its distinctive ethical-political vision. Confucianism is incompatible with the conventional understanding of democracy as liberal democracy best represented by the United States, focused on limiting government with checks and balances, prioritizing protection of the civil and political rights of individuals, regular elections of representatives in which partisan competition for power offers citizens very little real choice, and it …

Institutional Stretching: How Moroccan Ngos Illuminate The Nexus Of Climate, Migration, Gender And Development, Shelby Mertens

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The global migration crisis the world has experienced thus far is only the tip of the iceberg. As the earth’s temperature continues to warm and extreme weather conditions worsen, millions of people across the globe will be displaced, and women in particular will face more difficult challenges. What the climate migration literature fails to study is these longer-term impacts beyond sudden onset disasters. Governments and institutions will be forced to respond and adapt to the new reality resulting from the climate crisis. This research provides a case study of Morocco and, by using institutional ethnography, investigates how NGOs working in …

Re-Spatializing Gangs In The United States: An Analysis Of Macro- And Micro-Level Network Structures, Ryan J. Roberts

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Despite the significant contributions from location-based gang studies, the network structure of gangs beyond localized settings remains a neglected but important area of research to better understand the national security implications of gang interconnectivity. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the network structure of gangs at the macro- and micro-level using social network analysis. At the macro-level, some gangs have formed national alliances in perpetuity with their goals and objectives. In order to study gangs at the macro-level, this research uses open-source data to construct an adjacency matrix of gang alliances and rivalries to map the relationships between …

Institutional Context Drives Mobility: A Comprehensive Analysis Of How Academic And Economic Factors Relate To International Student Enrollment At United States Higher Education Institutions, Natalie Irby Cruz

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

International student enrollment (ISE) has become a hallmark of world-class higher education institutions (HEIs), particularly as global student mobility has grown exponentially worldwide in the last several decades. Although the United States (U.S.) has welcomed the largest numbers of international students since the 1950s, ISE shrunk by 10% in the previous three years from an all-time high of 903,127 students in 2016/2017 (IIE, 2019). A synthesis of research studies about international student mobility and enrollment highlights the significant role that academic and economic rationales play for international students who choose the United States. This quantitative, ex post facto study focused …

Environmentally Related Urbanization And Violence Potential, Christina Bagaglio Slentz

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

In contrast to historical examples in which urban increase is accompanied by the pull factors of wealth and development, post-industrialized sub-Saharan African urbanization patterns are characterized by a lack of economic growth, confounding experts. Simultaneously, African conflict scholars have observed a major geographical shift in African conflict onset, moving out of rural regions and into urban centers. Recognizing the effects of increasing climate variability and threatened agricultural livelihoods, this study hypothesizes perceived economic advantage in cities induces human movement with potential for over-urbanization dynamics that exacerbate civil unrest.

To investigate, a Panarchy theoretical framework of nested adaptive cycles is used …

Reinterpreted Europe: An Assessment Of Eu (In) Ability To Deal With Threats To The Rule Of Law, Huso Hasanovic

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The European Union has been the primary promoter of democracy and rule of law to its neighbors to the east. Much of the early scholarship as well as official documents on the EU’s transfer of norms to the east have shown some degree of optimism and expectation of serious reforms. Fast forward to its contemporary experience and the situation is significantly more grim than anticipated. Major think tanks like Freedom House, The Economist Democracy Index, and EU Venice Commission Reports show a stagnation and reversal on the question of rule of law, despite the millions of euros spent on anti-corruption …

Cybersecurity Legislation And Ransomware Attacks In The United States, 2015-2019, Joseph Skertic

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Ransomware has rapidly emerged as a cyber threat which costs the global economy billions of dollars a year. Since 2015, ransomware criminals have increasingly targeted state and local government institutions. These institutions provide critical infrastructure – e.g., emergency services, water, and tax collection – yet they often operate using outdated technology due to limited budgets. This vulnerability makes state and local institutions prime targets for ransomware attacks. Many states have begun to realize the growing threat from ransomware and other cyber threats and have responded through legislative action. When and how is this legislation effective in preventing ransomware attacks? This …