Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Migration Policy In The Era Of Trumpism And Media Spectacle: What A 2024 Trump [Or Other] Presidency Could Mean For Mexico-U.S. Relations [Política Migratoria En La Era Del Trumpismo Y Del Espectáculo Mediático: El Significado De Una Presidencia De Trump U Otro Candidato En 2024 Para Las Relaciones México-Estados Unidos], Terence Garrett

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Donald Trump may be the Republican presidential nominee for the 2024 election and is facing multiple indictments for alleged crimes committed during his presidency. If convicted, this would make a Trump election victory unlikely, although he is the master of the media spectacle and populist authoritarianism –essential components of Trumpism. I focus on U.S. migration policy consequences affecting Mexico and other states in the Americas if Trump wins in 2024. With a Republican win, the migration policy could revert back to a Title 42 migrant expulsion scenario, with attempts to harden the border using morepersonnel, infrastructure, and surveillance technology. President …

An Educated Guess: The Impact Of Education On Conspiracy Theories And Voting, Ellie Bickelhaupt

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

How strongly does education impact one's perception and opinion of conspiracy theories and voting? Throughout the years, conspiracy theories have been a rising trend in recent years that many people find entertaining, but many believe to be actual facts. The impact of one's education level can substantially change a person's beliefs in conspiracy theories and overall trust in the government. This trend has been shown by analyzing media consumption, education status, and the American National Election survey. This research will compare the trends between education level and conspiracy theory beliefs and how both affect a person's voting behavior. This research …

Factors In Decision Making Of Political Candidates, Levi Ramirez Garcia

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

What factors impact the decision to run as non-partisan over one of the major US parties? It is essential to analyze this phenomenon to determine the real motivations of candidates and the party they represent because they impact society as a whole. The candidates' ideologies and how the candidates feel representing the parties' ideologies are the main reasons for choosing non-partisan over one of the major US parties. This occurs because humans tend to work where they feel comfortable and in places with the same values and ideologies as them. It is the same in the case of candidates; they …

The Impact Of Federalism On Immigration: A Reconstruction Of The System To Alleviate The Immigration Crisis In America, Theresa Lam

Senior Honors Theses

Illegal immigration is a complex and relevant issue in the United States. In particular, its long-term implications for American communities has elevated its significance. Within America’s federalist system, the immigration dilemma has raised tension among federal, state, and local governments, which have different perspectives on how to approach the matter. The federal government is responsible for enforcing immigration laws but delegates numerous immigration responsibilities to state and local law enforcement. However, the degree to which local officials should cooperate with federal authorities is the subject of intense debate. Should immigration enforcement be a federal or local responsibility? Under federalism and …

News Deserts And Voter Turnout: How Local News Shortages Decrease Voter Participation, Lauren Penington

Honors Theses

How does local news impact a county’s registered voter population, associated voting patterns, and political participation? Electoral turnout is one of the most studied topics in political science, and substantial research exists into demographic factors — including race, age, and socioeconomic status — that influence an individual’s likelihood to vote. Recent studies have begun to examine the impact of societal factors — such as the internet, social media, and news — on an individual’s ability to and likelihood of fulfilling their civic obligation. This paper explores the relationship between expanding news deserts and decreasing voter turnout, proposing that as a …

Predicting The Future Of Myanmar’S Civil War: Can Half A Century Of Military Rule Be Defeated?, Nathan Ritterling

Honors Theses

In 2021, the military of Myanmar launched a coup in response to their overwhelming defeat in the 2020 elections, resulting in an end to the country’s tentative move towards democracy and in intense violence to suppress opposition to the coup. Anti-junta forces quickly formed in the aftermath to directly oppose the military and return the country to democratic rule, and began collaborating with long-standing ethnic militias in their efforts. This has led to a state of prolonged civil war, as the two sides fight for dominance over the nature of Myanmar’s future government. This paper investigated the potential outcome of …

The Contemporary Causes Of Americans' Fear Of Illegal Immigration, Amilie Cai

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Annually, the U.S. aspires to extend its liberality by opening its border to more than ten thousand refugees. In this paper, I examine how political party identification, census region, and internet usage influence U.S. adults' fear of illegal immigration. Relying on the 2023 Chapman Survey of American Fears, a representative national sample of U.S. adults, I find that political party has remained a consistent predictor for an American’s fear of illegal immigration, with people who align themselves with the Republican Party in 2022 being more afraid of illegal immigration compared to other political parties, such as the Democrat Party. In …

Navigating Islamophobia: Exploring Attitudes Towards Muslim Immigration And Policing, Devansh Mehta

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Since the September 11th terrorist attacks, Islamophobic dispositions in the United States have surged within its political and societal arenas. In this paper, I will examine two specific dimensions of Islamophobia such as ceasing immigration from Muslim countries and increased police presence in Muslim neighborhoods and how those behaviors may be influenced by political affiliation and different ways news is consumed using social media and cable news. Relying on the Chapman Survey of American Fears, a representative national sample of U.S. adults completed a forty-question survey in which I tested the above independent variables to see their individual effects on …

A Red Awakening: An Analysis Of China’S Quest For Global Dominance Through Economic Alternative Warfare Methods, Sarah Beddingfield

Senior Honors Theses

In the 2023 annual meeting of China’s parliament, Chinese President Xi made it clear to his political leaders and the world that he was preparing for war. This should come as no surprise after analysis of China's grand strategy points clearly to the intent to surpass the U.S. as the premier global superpower in all respects. China has been building towards this goal for years through untraditional methods of warfare, forcing the national security community to reevaluate its own strategy and assess the Chinese threat through a different lens. This thesis seeks to address one specific area in which China …

Peacekeeping The Commons: Un Peacekeeping Moderates The Effects Of Climate Change On Intercommunal Conflict, Cara Hunter

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The effects of climate change have been increasingly linked to the risk of intercommunal conflict, as climatic shocks have been shown to increase resource scarcity. Policymakers and academics agree that effectively designed institutions are critical variables in preventing and mitigating conflict, particularly in ecologically-fragile areas. However, there is a lack of evidence on the specific ways to strengthen institutions in the face of climate change, especially in conflict-affected settings. We argue that UN Peacekeeping Operations moderate the effects of climate change on intercommunal conflict by strengthening institutions governing common-pool resources (CPRs) to increase cooperation between communities sharing scarce resources. We …

Fear Of China's Economic Power: Media And Party Affiliation On Public Opinion, Cloe Hughes

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The United States and China are the world’s two greatest economic rivals. The US-China trade war–which started in 2018–is a result of this battle for economic hegemony and has raged on for the past six years. While trade decisions are ultimately up to policymakers, public opinion is a large factor in international policy decisions, and American biases against the Chinese may adversely affect both the American and Chinese economies. In this paper, I will examine how factors including media consumption and partisanship impact American attitudes towards China’s economy overtaking the United States’ economy. Previous research has studied the effects of …

The Gender Divide: Exploring Gender Patterns Of Perceived And Realistic Risks Of Murder By Unknown And Known Perpetrators, Haley Forth

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

In a society where vulnerability is often associated with femininity, women are depicted as helpless victims, which in turn underscores the gendered challenges faced by both men and women. It is thought that gender disparities among women increase the likelihood of fear and risk of murder victimization. Rather, both men and women face homicide at significant rates where gender vulnerability is correlated to different types of violence. In this paper, I examine the complexities of gendered perceptions of perceived and realistic risks behind the fear of being murdered by someone you know and murdered by a stranger. Relying on the …

What Comes After The Critique Of The Corporate University? Toward A Syndicalist University, Clyde W. Barrow

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

For the past three decades, university faculty have produced a cascade of contemporary protest literature that routinely criticizes the knowledge factory, academic capitalism, managed professionals, college for sale, the university in ruins, the corporate corruption of higher education, and University, Inc. University faculty are regularly warned about the fall of the faculty, the last professors, and the last intellectuals. This article reviews the historical development of the corporate and neoliberal university, but it takes the next step of asking what is to be done after the critique of the corporate university. It calls on faculty to engage in a variety …

Charge The Cockpit Or Die: An Anatomy Of Fear-Driven Political Rhetoric In American Conservatism, Daniel Hostetter

Senior Honors Theses

Subthreshold negative emotions have superseded conscious reason as the initial and strongest motivators of political behavior. Political neuroscience uses the concepts of negativity bias and terror management theory to explore why fear-driven rhetoric plays such an outsized role in determining human political actions. These mechanisms of human anthropology are explored by competing explanations from biblical and evolutionary scholars who attempt to understand their contribution to human vulnerabilities to fear. When these mechanisms are observed in fear-driven political rhetoric, three common characteristics emerge: exaggerated threat, tribal combat, and religious apocalypse, which provide a new framework for explaining how modern populist leaders …

Human Rights Abuses In Post Conflict Societies & Subsequent Case Study On Guatemala, Morgan Van Beck

CSB and SJU Distinguished Thesis

No abstract provided.

Unmasking The Holder Of The Purse Strings: Countering Chinese Economic Coercion In The Indo-Pacific, Rachel L. Davis

Senior Honors Theses

The Indo-Pacific is a key focal point of U.S.-China competition due to its geographical, economic, and military significance. China is using political warfare to achieve its strategic goals in the region, influencing other nations to align with its interests. Economic coercion is a key tool of this warfare. This is evident in the Pacific Islands, among America’s treaty allies, in Southeast Asia, and in South Asia. To prove itself the superior partner, maintain access to key points of land, and keep the Indo-Pacific open for trade, the U.S. must counter China’s activities. This can be achieved via a stronger economic …

British Populism: Ideals Over The Individual, David Pipitone

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Over the course of the last decade or so, a wave of populism - especially of the right-wing type - has crashed upon many democratic countries across the globe. Through this wave, sitting governments have been ousted, the direction of policy has been turned around completely, and to this day, debates about the future of democracy continue in each of them. So too was the United Kingdom hit by this wave. A boiling of right-wing resentment of David Cameron led him to call a referendum on British membership in the European Union to placate the United Kingdom Independence Party in …

Textual Assessment Of Leaders Individual Differences: Exploring Talid, Michael Young

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity Faculty Scholarship

The Textual Assessment of Leader Individual Differences (TALID) is a growing archive of leader speech and a dataset of individual difference scores for more than 750 global leaders. TALID includes texts accumulated by Social Science Automation, Inc and Margaret G. Hermann during a variety of research projects conducted since 1997. Recent additions to TALID include documents for Joseph Biden and Donald Trump contributed by the Xiamen University Digital Presidents Project. The scores in the data set are all generated using automated coding schemes running on Profiler Plus (Levine & Young, 2014). Variables included in TALID are for Leadership Trait Analysis …

The Times They Are A-Changin’: A Longitudinal Review Of Public Opinion Methodology, 2011-2023, Paige M. Thissen, James Cottrill, Amanda Hemmesch, Ann Finan, Sandrine Zerbib

Scholarship in SCSU Survey

Rapid changes in survey practices and respondent behavior poses significant challenges to public opinion research methodology. We review these challenges, and their implications, here.

What Can We Learn About Teaching Excellence From Our Students? Lessons From Six Years Of Teaching Award Data, Christopher Shortell, Kris Henning, Carl Christiansen

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Teaching excellence in higher education can be defined and studied in different ways, but research efforts to date have often focused on institutional or instructor perspectives. This article uses a data set of over 500 open-ended comments submitted by Political Science undergraduates as part of a teaching award process to identify themes that matter most to students. We find that being supportive, bringing humor, enthusiasm, and passion to the classroom, and engaging students with relevant, challenging, and exciting activities are what defines teaching excellence from a student’s perspective. Building on these themes and using quotes to illustrate key concepts, we …

Securing Securities: Political Risk, Sovereign Debt, And The Anglo-American Financial Power Transition, Michael Lee

Publications and Research

Under what conditions do countries lose their status as the leading global financial center? Some scholars argue that such shifts follow shortly after transitions in the distribution of other key capabilities (e.g. GDP), while others argue that path dependence or other more bespoke capabilities might be able to sustain financial leadership long after decline in other capabilities. This paper aims to understand the causes of the Anglo-American financial transition. I argue that the ability to manage political risk for investors is critical to the position of countries as financial entrepôts. In the case of British financial leadership, I argue that …

Is The Future Female? Lessons From A Conjoint Experiment On Voter Preferences In Six Arab Countries, Ellen Lust, Lindsay J. Benstead

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Despite growing evidence of pro-female bias in the electorate elsewhere, conventional wisdom holds that voters in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) prefer male candidates, presumably due to sexism. We test this conventional wisdom using a conjoint experiment administered to over 30,000 respondents in six MENA countries. We find both male and female respondents are more likely to express support for female candidates and see them as more capable than their male counterparts, even in stereotypically male domains. We argue the increasing demand for political outsiders explains these results. In highlighting the importance of such changes, our study expands …

Russia In A Changing Climate, Debra Javeline, Robert Orttung, Graeme Robertson, Richard Arnold, Andrew Barnes, Laura Henry, Edward Holland, Mariya Omelicheva, Peter Rutland, Edward Schatz, Caress Schenk, Andrei Semenov, Valerie Sperling, Lisa Mcintosh Sundstrom, Mikhail Troitskiy, Judith Twigg, Susanne Wengle

Political Science

Climate change will shape the future of Russia, and vice versa, regardless of who rules in the Kremlin. The world's largest country is warming faster than Earth as a whole, occupies more than half the Arctic Ocean coastline, and is waging a carbon-intensive war while increasingly isolated from the international community and its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Officially, the Russian government argues that, as a major exporter of hydrocarbons, Russia benefits from maintaining global reliance on fossil fuels and from climate change itself, because warming may increase the extent and quality of its arable land, open a new …

The Art Of Engaging The Public: The Effect Of The Arts On Civic Engagement, Kathryn Fraley

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of State Climate Action Plans: What Influences States To Adopt, Ethan Yaroch

Honors Theses

Federal-level policies aimed to address and mitigate the effects that will arise from climate change have become an extremely polarizing issue in the United States. Given this policy stalemate, individual states have stepped up to address the national-level shortcomings by publishing state-level Climate Action Plans (CAPs). CAPs mainly consist of emissions mitigation goals and other non-binding policy initiatives that provide a basis for future compulsory legislation. This paper examines whether party identification in the state legislature, public opinion, susceptibility to the risks associated with climate change, and proximity to neighboring states with published CAPs influence states to adopt CAPs. Employing …

The Future Is Here, Kazi Uzayr Razin

Audre Lorde Writing Prize

This essay explores the devastating impacts that global warming currently has on women living in the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest globally, located in South Asia. Womanist ideas are employed to identify the underlying injustices within environmental policies like the Paris Agreement, which undermine the effects of climate change in the global south. Initiatives led by women in vulnerable regions are then shared to offer ideas for improvement.

Refugees And The Eu: A Study Of The Preferential Treatment Of Ukrainian Refugees, Madelyn Cooper

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

The war in Ukraine created one of the largest refugee crises in the world today, and the European Union has played a significant role in accepting these individuals into various Member States. The protection of Ukrainian refugees, or any refugee for the record, is important. However, the European Union has been more accepting and welcoming to Ukrainian refugees compared to refugees coming from other places, indicating potential biases of European Union policies and the othering of non-Ukrainian refugees. To study this, this paper will utilize a comparative case study of Ukrainian and Syrian refugees. The paper will compare these two …

Impact Of Religious Extremism On Government Stability, Jasmine Usmanova

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

What causes government instability? This question has sparked various arguments. While some attribute government instability to economic factors like income inequality, others point to political dynamics such as the number of effective parties, or social factors like trust in the government. However, this paper argues that religious extremism, particularly when propagated by states through the adoption and enforcement of laws, policies, and practices that excessively integrate religious doctrines into the legal and governance framework, is a significant driver of government instability.

In this paper, we specifically utilize data from the year 2013. We employ the Gini index to account for …

Implications And Recommendations For U.S. Security Alliances: South Korea's Anticipated Nuclear Proliferation, Ethan Czapla

Honors Theses

In 2023, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol suggested South Korea should consider pursuing a sovereign nuclear weapon arsenal, a striking departure from the history of South Korea’s non-proliferation posture. The pursuit of a nuclear capability or redeployment of nuclear weapons has gained traction among the South Korean public, as over 70% supported acquiring a sovereign nuclear capability in 2021. In this paper, I argue nuclear proliferation in South Korea would (1) destabilize regional security, (2) diminish U.S. security alliances, and (3) undermine the international rules-based order regarding non-proliferation and offer policy recommendations for U.S. defense practitioners in order to boost …

Antislavery White Supremacists And The Mistreatment Of African Americans In Indiana, 1787-1870, Mark A. King

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Conventional wisdom holds that Indiana was always predominantly antislavery because it had begun as a territory of the United States under the Northwest Territory Act of 1787, which prohibited slavery; however, this is incorrect. This northern state had about as much proslavery sentiment as most states in the South. The state wrestled with the issue in the legislative session after the legislative session and court case after court case for decades during the antebellum period. Prominent settlers and state organizers petitioned Congress to allow the Indiana Territory to become a slave region. After statehood, proslavery forces continued to push for …