Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Political Viability Of Carbon Pricing: Policy Design And Framing In British Columbia And California, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

The adoption of climate policies with visible, substantial costs for households is uncommon because of expected political backlash, but British Columbia's carbon tax and California's cap-and-trade program imposed such costs and still survived vigorous opposition. To explain these outcomes, this paper tests hypotheses concerning policy design, framing, energy prices, and elections. It conducts universalizing and variation-finding comparisons across three subcases in the two jurisdictions and uses primary sources to carry out process tracing involving mechanisms of public opinion and elite position taking. The paper finds strong support for the timing of independent energy price changes, exogenous causes of election results, …

Federalism As A Double-Edged Sword: The Slow Energy Transition In The United States, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

Much literature on federalism and multi-level governance argues that federalist institutional arrangements promote renewable-energy policies. However, the U.S. case supports a different view, that federalism has ambivalent effects. Policy innovation has occurred at the state level and to some extent has led to policy adoption by other states and the federal government, but the extent is limited by the veto power of fossil-fuel interests that are rooted in many state governments and in Congress, buttressed by increasing Republican Party hostility to environmental and climate policy. This argument is supported by a detailed analysis of five periods of federal and state …

Keynesian Uncertainty: The Great Divide Between Joan Robinson And Paul Samuelson In Their Correspondence And Public Exchanges, Harvey Gram, G. C. Harcourt

Publications and Research

Joan Robinson and Paul Samuelson found little to agree upon in a correspondence which began in 1946, shortly after the death of Keynes, and ended a year prior to Robinson’s death in 1983. One way to read the correspondence is to keep in mind that Keynesian uncertainty was central to Robinson’s understanding of how capitalist economies function. Samuelson, never impressed by Keynes’s handling of uncertainty, understood capital theory—if not capitalism—in terms of dynamic programming, with its perfect foresight entailments. This is evident throughout his letters to Robinson, although rarely acknowledged in a straightforward way, particularly during the period from 1971 …

Validating And Developing The User Engagement Scale In Web-Based Visual Information Searching, Qiong Xu

Publications and Research

Guided by the theoretical frameworks of interactive information searching and user engagement (UE), this study proposed sense discovery (SD) as a UE attribute and suggested a refined four-factor user engagement scale (UES) model for the measurement of users’ psychological involvement in web-based visual information searching. Using a mixed-methods approach based on a survey, this study confirmed the inter-item reliability of the original six-factor UES in three visual contexts—a general visual context, image searching on Google (ISG), and video searching on YouTube (VSY). Principal component analyses (PCA) partially confirmed the internal consistency of the original six UE subscales and suggested conceptual …

Is Lying Contagious? Spatial Diffusion Of High-Yield “Satellites” During China’S Great Leap Forward, Hongwei Xu, Geng Tian

Publications and Research

Situated in China’s Great Leap Forward (GLF) campaign in 1958, this study examines the spatial diffusion of “launching high-yield satellites”— exaggerating grain yields, which contributed to the 1959–61 GLF famine that claimed millions of human lives. The authors conceptualize exaggerating grain yields as a political innovation adopted by local cadres to endorse the GLF and signal political loyalty to their superiors. Using geocoded county-level event history data from historical newspaper archives, the authors found that the diffusion of exaggerating grain yields across the country was primarily driven by the interaction between geographic proximity and political proximity.

Biography And Sociology: Berger On Religion As Choice Rather Than Fate, Samuel Heilman

Publications and Research

Is there a connection between biography and sociology for Peter Berger? The short answer, as demonstrated by his own memoir, Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist, is “yes.” But in his book, he traces this connection to his own arrival and training at the Graduate Faculty of the New School. I would like to suggest that the process begins earlier in his life. Known for his work on the sociology of knowledge, the examination of how “society influences thought,” I suggest an examination of how one’s biography influences thought, the environment in which Berger grew played a major role in his …

Easily Overstated: Estimating The Relationship Between State Justice Policy Environments And Falling Rates Of Youth Confinement, Douglas N. Evans, Gina Moreno, Kevin T. Wolff, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

Researchers used state-level data on youth justice policies and practices to explore the association between state policy environments and recent changes in the use of residential placements for adjudicated youth (i.e., confinement). The study assigned a score to each of the 50 states based on the extent to which their youth justice policy environments could be considered "progressive" as opposed to punitive or regressive. Using data from the National Center for Juvenile Justice's compendium of justice system characteristics, "Juvenile Justice, Geography, Policy, Practice & Statistics" (JJGPS), the research team created an index that accounts for 16 policies that are more …

Viewpoint Symposium Introduction: #Metoo In Academia: Understanding And Addressing Pervasive Challanges, Maria J. D’Agostino, Nicole Elias

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Characterization Of Women And Leadership In Public Administration And Beyond, Maria J. D'Agostino, Meghna Sabharwal, Helisse Levine

Publications and Research

Women were 30% of the labor force in 1950 and 48.6% of the workforce today. Women are also currently outpacing men in the attainment of college degrees – 36% of women aged between 25- 29 years have a bachelor’s degree compared to 28% of males in the same age group and have surpassed men in college graduation rates. Despite these growing numbers, women have yet to reach a critical mass in leadership positions. Women represent less than 5% of CEOs in Fortune 500 companies. Out of 195 state heads around the world, only 15 are currently women. Less than 20% …

Care In Crisis: Covid-19 As A Catalyst For Universal Child Care In The United States, Nicole Elias, Maria J. D’Agostino

Publications and Research

School closings during COVID-19 exposed an under-addressed gender equity issue in the United States: child care in crisis. To better understand the child care crisis in the current U.S. context, we detail how New York City is addressing child care during COVID-19. We then connect the current approaches to the Lanham Act that was instituted during WWII as a historical parallel. Ultimately, we argue for the adoption of a universal system that is affordable, high-quality, federally-funded with local involvement and discretion, and flexible for primary caregivers seeking care support. This potential system builds on current congressional proposals and should take …

Did Juvenile Domestic Violence Offending Change During Covid-19?, Michael T. Baglivio, Kevin T. Wolff, Joan A. Reid, Sherry L. Jackson, Alex R. Piquero

Publications and Research

The current study adds some of the first light into the initial impacts of the largest global health crisis in a generation on family and domestic violence, the long-term repercussions of which may take decades to unpack. Statewide trends in juvenile arrests for domestic violence (DV)-related offending are examined, taking into account school closures for in-person learning in March 2020 and the subsequent mandate for an in-person learning option in Florida in August 2020. Additionally, trends by sex, race/ethnicity, and severity of the offense are examined. Contrasting with growing studies demonstrating an increase in DV-related arrests among adults, we find …

A Third Option: Understanding And Assessing Non-Binary Gender Policies In The United States, Nicole M. Elias, Roddrick Colvin

Publications and Research

Our fundamental understandings and treatments of gender and gender identity within the United States are evolving. Recently, a few countries and several U.S. states have moved away from the binary categories of male and female to include a non-binary gender option for official state documents. This third, gender-neutral option, is usually represented as "X" where "M" for male and "F" for female traditionally appeared. The purpose of this study is twofold; first, to utilize Iris Marion Young's theory of oppression to help contextualize the historical oppression of non-binary gender identity recognition by the State, and second, to analyze recent efforts …

Examining Public Opinion About Abortion: A Mixed-Methods Systematic Review Of Research Over The Last 15 Years, Amy Adamczyk, Chunrye Kim, Leevia Dillon

Publications and Research

Although abortion became legal four decades ago, Americans remain staunchly divided over its acceptability. While researchers have been interested in the factors shaping abortion attitudes, there are almost no reviews of this work. We examine the factors shaping Americans’ abortion attitudes and assess the state of published peer-reviewed articles in this area over the last 15 years. Using a mixed-methods systematic review, we analyze and critique the findings from 116 journal articles that have examined attitudes about abortion between 2001 and 2016. Amongst the many predictors and outcomes examined, we show that religion is by far the most utilized statistically …

The Political Viability Of Carbon Pricing: Policy Design And Framing In British Columbia And California, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

The adoption of climate policies with visible, substantial costs for households is uncommon because of expected political backlash, but British Columbia's carbon tax and California's cap-and-trade program imposed such costs and still survived vigorous opposition. To explain these outcomes, this paper tests hypotheses concerning policy design, framing, energy prices, and elections. It conducts universalizing and variation-finding comparisons across three subcases in the two jurisdictions and uses primary sources to carry out process tracing involving mechanisms of public opinion and elite position taking. The paper finds strong support for the timing of independent energy price changes, exogenous causes of election results, …

From Neoliberalism To Socialism: Reimagining Socialism In Africa, Kiiru Gichuru

Dissertations and Theses

Abstract. For many scholars, pundits, policy makers, and citizens alike, Africa’s persistent maldevelopment has continued to defy the usual International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and foreign aid prescriptions that are, at times, peddled as silver bullets to the African conundrum. Beginning in the late 1970s, loans from the IMF and World Bank required African governments to implement certain conditions that were supposed to address public sector mismanagement, illiberal trade policies, low foreign investment, and state development. These austerity measures were designed to usher in an era of financial growth that would enable Africa to join the ranks of developed …

Emergent Women's Global Political Leadership: Progress Despite Constraints, Aoife Meehan

Dissertations and Theses

“Emergent Women’s Global Political Leadership: Progress Despite Constraints” seeks to trace why and how female political leaders emerge at the global level. Evidence points to certain cultural factors, often expressed by laws, constraining or supporting women as they seek political advancement. Data shows women leaders are emerging more and more, though slowly, as political leaders around the world. Reviewing women’s participation and representation regionally and nationally in parliaments, as ministers, and as heads of governments and states confirms that women can and do emerge as political leaders. Finally, learning about and examining women leaders themselves, their style and substance, proves …

Political Representation For Indigenous Peoples In The Andes, Jessica Yepez

Dissertations and Theses

For years, there has been a lack of representation for indigenous peoples in communities, and most importantly in parliament. This is a very common trait in the South American Andes, which houses the largest number of indigenous groups in the continent. This thesis focuses on Ecuador and Bolivia due to their indigenous population and their history, or lack thereof, with indigenous people in parliament. For my hypothesis, I argue that parliamentary representation of indigenous peoples, can help ensure that their rights are protected, and their unique interests are heard and translated into relevant policies, while at the same time preventing …

Counterterrorism: The G5 Response Efforts To Combat Terrorism In The Sahel Region, Ndeye Fatou Ndiaye

Dissertations and Theses

Abstract

Africa’s Sahel suffers from multidimensional challenges that require robust solutions to address the issues. The regional crisis is aggravated by multiple factors that include climate risks, poverty, unemployment, water shortages, weak governance, lack of rule of law, food security to cite a few. Thus, a combination of factors greatly contribute to the Sahel crisis, resulting in severe security threats. This study attempts to analyze the role of the G5 Sahel states and the international community in counter-terrorism efforts. However, the region has emerged as the new battleground for terrorism along with a growing threat of violent extremism and other …

Zoning – Neighborhood Character And Historic Overlays In Lexington, Ky, Taylor S. Price

Dissertations and Theses

Zoning has a significant impact on our built environment. Overlay zoning, an additional form of restrictive zoning, is a tool that municipalities utilize to control development and changes to neighborhoods. This study analyzes the impact that historic district (H-1) and neighborhood character (ND-1) overlays have on home sale prices in Lexington, KY. Results suggests that overlays have a significant positive impact on home values. Results also suggest that that overlays exhibit spatial impacts that extend further than the homes included in the overlay.

Does Overweight/Obesity Moderate The Association Between Adhd And Internalizing Difficulties In Young Adults?, Breanna Badripersaud

Dissertations and Theses

This study’s objective was to investigate if ADHD symptoms and BMI are associated with internalizing impairments of depression, anxiety, stress and lower self-esteem in college students. It was predicted that higher ADHD symptoms would be associated with elevated depression, anxiety, stress, and low self-esteem, especially if BMI fell in the overweight/obese range. Undergraduate students [N= 580; Mean (SD) age= 20.7 (3.10)] from an urban campus completed an online survey comprising self-report measures of demographics, height/weight, attention and hyperactivity/impulsivity (Barkley Deficits Executive Functioning Scale ADHD- Executive Function Index), depression, anxiety, stress (all using the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale) and self- …

Socioeconomic And Racial/Ethnic Disparities In Adhd And Alcohol Use Among College Students, Laurie Pierre-Paul

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

The Modern Formulation Of Chinese Art History And The Building Of A Nation In Early Twentieth-Century China, Chennie Huang

Dissertations and Theses

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the Chinese formulation of art history underwent dramatic changes. It moved away from the traditional narratives that did not follow a strict chronology to adopt the Western linear model which emphasizes progress and national identity. Based on the premodern tradition, the modern formulations of Chinese art history began as a political strategy for nation building amid the political upheavals, including military attacks on China that led to the end of Qing imperial rule and the beginning of the Republican era (1912-1949).

In the early 1900s, while exiled in Japan, Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873-1929), …

The Battle For The Battle Of Adwa: Collective Identity And Nation-Building, Joseph A. Steward

Dissertations and Theses

Abstract

On March 1^st, 1896, an Ethiopian army lead by Emperor Menelik II dealt a shocking defeat to the invading Italian forces in the Battle of Adwa. In victory, Menelik was able to exert his authority over a vast territory which included both the historical, ancient kingdoms of the northern and central parts of Ethiopia, and also the vast, resource-rich territories in the west and south which he had earlier conquered. The egalitarian nature of the victory united the various peoples of Ethiopia against a common enemy, giving Menelik the opportunity to create a new Ethiopian nation.

The …

The Epidemiology Of Somatic Depression And Eating Disorders: The Relationship Between Depressive Subtypes And Symptoms Of Disordered Eating, Anita M. Sicignano

Dissertations and Theses

Depression is known to affect females in much greater numbers than males, with about three times as many women having the disorder as men (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). A similar gender disparity can be seen in eating disorders, where up to nine in ten sufferers are female (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Studies have shown that most of the gender difference in depression occurs as a result of women experiencing a form of depression involving a number of body-centric symptoms, including headaches, weight changes, fatigue, and insomnia, which has been termed “somatic depression” (Silverstein et al., 2013). Some of the symptoms, …

Mechanisms Of Value-Biased Prioritization In Fast Sensorimotor Decision Making, Kivilcim Afacan-Seref

Dissertations and Theses

In dynamic environments, split-second sensorimotor decisions must be prioritized according to potential payoffs to maximize overall rewards. The impact of relative value on deliberative perceptual judgments has been examined extensively, but relatively little is known about value-biasing mechanisms in the common situation where physical evidence is strong but the time to act is severely limited. This research examines the behavioral and electrophysiological indices of how value biases split-second perceptual decisions and the possible mechanisms underlying the process. In prominent decision models, a noisy but statistically stationary representation of sensory evidence is integrated over time to an action-triggering bound, and value-biases …

Motivation And Perceived Barriers For Underrepresented Students Interested In Art Therapy, Michael A. Jesson

Dissertations and Theses

Substantial racial and gender disparities exist in art therapy (AT), with 90% of U.S. art therapists identifying as White and female. This has been identified as a major concern of both practitioners and educators, though little research has been performed. To understand the role of student motivation and barriers to the field, this study recruited 116 undergraduate students academically exposed to AT. Student interest in the field, psychological needs defined by Self-Determination Theory and perceived educational and career barriers were measured. Autonomy, relatedness and competence regarding studies in AT as well as financial barriers were significantly related to interest in …

Free-To-Play? An Examination Of Intrinsic Motivation And Gaming Behaviors In U.S. Female Mobile Gamers, Margot Goldblum

Dissertations and Theses

The prevalence of U.S. female gamers has skyrocketed in recent years, largely due to the popularity of mobile games; however, this population is underrepresented in academic research. The present study aimed to close this gap in the literature by focusing on the motivations and behaviors of adult female mobile gamers in the U.S. It also aimed to capture changes in gaming motivation and behavior resulting from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. An online sample of 354 American women 18 to 77 years of age (M = 36.79, SD = 12.38) were surveyed about their motivations for mobile gaming, …

Mindfulness As A Moderator Of The Relation Between Acculturative Stress And Body Dissatisfaction/Eating Disorder Symptoms In Latinx Students, Ariana J. Mackson

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study is to test the theory that mindfulness is an effective coping strategy for reducing acculturative stress and body dissatisfaction/eating disorder symptoms. It was hypothesized that acculturative stress would be associated with more body dissatisfaction/eating disorder symptoms, but this relation was expected to be moderated by mindfulness. It was also predicted that mindfulness would be associated with less acculturative stress and less body dissatisfaction/eating disorder symptoms. Thirty-eight Latinx students were recruited from The City College of New York, CUNY, through the web-based survey participation pool SONA. Participants answered questions assessing their levels of acculturative stress, mindfulness, …

Does Resilience Moderate The Impact Of Children’S Experiences Of Racial And Ethnic Discrimination On Internalizing Problems?, Dahlia Abbas

Dissertations and Theses

This study’s objectives were to investigate how children’s experiences of discrimination impact the severity of their internalizing symptoms, and whether the relation between discrimination and internalizing symptom severity is moderated by resilience. It was predicted that children who had experienced more discrimination would have more severe internalizing symptoms, especially when they have low levels of resilience. Children [N=20; Mean (SD) age= 11.83 (2.50)] receiving low-cost music lessons in northern Manhattan were recruited into a larger study examining how learning music affects cognitive and emotional development. Children were interviewed in-person about experiences of discrimination because of their race/ethnicity using the Perceptions …

Financial Development And Economic Growth, Chiau-Jiun Jiang

Dissertations and Theses

This paper purposes to discuss the relationship between the financial development and economic growth. In the past, most studies related to the influence of financial development on economic growth used cross-sectional analysis or time series analysis. However, the cross-sectional analysis cannot explain the long-term trend of the time series, and the time series is unable to explain the multiple samples of the cross-section. Based on Arellano and Bond (1991), and Arellano and Bover (1995), this paper utilizes the panel data model to discuss financial development and economic growth. The results point out that bank credit in total GDP and capitalization …