Political Science Commons^™

Stone, Amy Michelle (Hodgkins), B. 1972 (Sc 836), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 836. Research paper written by Amy M. Hodgkins Stone entitled “The Assassination of President Kennedy As Witnessed by Dr. Francis Thompson” written for U.S. History class, 27 November 1990.

Gooch, Thomas Claiborne, 1830-1889 (Sc 810), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 810. Letter, 1864, written by Thomas Claiborne Gooch, Louisville, Kentucky, to his brother William, Logan County, Kentucky. Includes comments about the gold standard, Major General Stephen Gano Burbridge, George B. McClellan’s chances of winning the 1864 presidential election, and Robert E. Lee’s international influence.

Mccreery, Thomas Clay, 1816-1890 (Sc 568), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 568. Two 1868 letters from Thomas Clay McCreery, Washington, D.C. to unknwon recipients, which give the addresses of two former U.S. senators from Kentucky. McCreery was serving as U.S. senator from Kentucky at the time.

Sand Hill Democratic Club - Warren County, Kentucky (Sc 809), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 809. Notice of meeting called for 14 September 1888 to organize a Democratic club at Sand Hill, Warren County, Kentucky.

Reeves, A. C. (Sc 772), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 772. Political letter regarding the possibility of A. C. Reeves running against an opponent named Hayley. The writer (signature missing) suggests a meeting with Henry C. Hines to see local supporters in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

If We Are A 'Civilized' Society, We Must Find A Way To Stop Violence, David Houghton

UCF Forum

Other nations genuinely look to America as an example, a shining “city upon a hill,” as Massachusetts Bay colony’s first Gov. John Winthrop famously put it. But they cannot understand what they often call America’s “love affair” with guns.

Reports From Presidential Commissions And Councils, Minnesota State University, Mankato

Democracy/Government

Bibliography and photographs of a display of government documents from Minnesota State University, Mankato.

The 57th Presidential Inauguration, Arizona State University

Elections/Voting

Bibliography and photographs of a display of government documents from Arizona State University.

Documents Of Democracy, Minnesota State University, Mankato

Democracy/Government

Bibliography and photograph of a display of government documents from Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Leading From Behind The Gap: Post-Racial Politics And The Pedagogy Of Black Studies, Seneca Vaught

Faculty Articles

An Associated Press Poll released on the eve of the 2012 presidential election revealed that more Americans are overtly racist today than four years ago.

Building Coalitions, Making Policy: The Politics Of The Clinton, Bush, And Obama Presidencies, By Martin A. Levin, Daniel Disalvo, And Martin M. Shapiro, Eds., José Villalobos

Selected Works Temporary Series

No abstract provided.

Deracialized Leadership And Promotion Of African American Political Engagement: Cory Booker's Use Of Twitter, Marisol Mcnair

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

Cory Booker was elected mayor of Newark, New Jersey in 2006, after two rancorous and racially charged campaign cycles; he used a deracialized political style that challenged traditional thinking about Black leadership for many in Newark. Booker uses the social networking tool, Twitter, to establish a cohesive group identity and to legitimize his leadership with African Americans in Newark. We use a social media “engagement infrastructure” framework developed by Leighninger and Mann (2011) to review Booker’s postings on Twitter over a 31-day period. The goal of this review was to analyze the ways in which Booker utilizes social media to …

The Vicious Cycle: Fundraising And Perceived Viability In U.S. Presidential Primaries, Cameron A. Shelton, James J. Feigenbaum

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

Scholars of presidential primaries have long posited a dynamic positive feedback loop between fundraising and electoral success. Yet existing work on both directions of this feedback remains inconclusive and is often explicitly cross-sectional, ignoring the dynamic aspect of the hypothesis. Pairing high-frequency FEC data on contributions and expenditures with Iowa Electronic Markets data on perceived probability of victory, we examine the bidirectional feedback between contributions and viability. We find robust, significant positive feedback in both directions. This might suggest multiple equilibria: a candidate initially anointed as the front-runner able to sustain such status solely by the fundraising advantage conferred despite …

Building Coalitions, Making Policy: The Politics Of The Clinton, Bush, And Obama Presidencies, By Martin A. Levin, Daniel Disalvo, And Martin M. Shapiro, Eds., José Villalobos

Departmental Papers (PS)

No abstract provided.

Hegemony And Humanitarian Norms: The Us Legitimation Of Toxic Violence, Eric Bonds

History and American Studies Articles

Despite widespread beliefs that the United States has not used chemical weapons since the distant past of World War I, this study suggests a more complicated history by examining U.S. use of herbicides and incapacitating gases in the Vietnam War and its use of herbicides in the "War on Drugs." This article places such use of toxic violence within a context of U.S. hegemony, by which U.S. officials have used contested forms of violence to secure geopolitical goals, but have also been pressured to comply with humanitarian norms or-when there is a gap between norms and state policy-to do legitimating …

Institutional Change And The Presidential Mandate, Julia R. Azari

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Often treated as a unified concept with a single definition, the presidential mandate actually encompasses multiple definitions, each connected to distinct ideas about democracy and presidential leadership. This article looks at how and when modern presidents have used mandate rhetoric and seeks to explain changes in presidential mandate-claiming patterns. Using an original dataset of 1,467 presidential communications from 1933 through 2009, I find that after 1969 presidents became more likely to use election results to justify their actions. However, they also became less likely to emphasize the magnitude of the election result, focusing their mandate rhetoric instead on campaign promises …

Social Construction And Political Decision Making In The American Prison System(S), Jeremiah Olson

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

With over two million inmates, the United States’ prison population is the largest in the world. Nearly one in one hundred Americans are behind bars, either in prisons or pre-trial detention facilities. The rapid growth in incarceration is well-documented. However, social science explanations often stop at the prison gates, with little work on treatment inside prisons. This black box approach ignores important bureaucratic decisions, including the provision of rehabilitative services and the application of punishment.

This dissertation offers a systematic analysis of treatment decisions inside the American prisons. I use a mixed methods approach, combining multiple quantitative datasets with environmental …

Changing America: The Impact Of Immigration On Welfare Attitudes And Welfare Reform, Jason E. Kehrberg

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

The purpose of my dissertation is to further our understanding of why some states restricted immigrant access to welfare in the 1990s while other states granted immigrants access to social programs. With the passage of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), many states diverged from equal access to welfare programs, such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), for immigrants arriving after 1996. Very little scholarly work examines the variance in immigrants’ access to welfare programs. Current research studying welfare attitudes and policy has largely failed to investigate whether and how the influx of immigrants over the last …

The Will To Adapt: The Post 2008 Us Economic Crisis And Its Impact On Refugee Resettlement In The United States, Meredith Byrne

Government and International Relations Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

North Dakota’S Oil Boom And Its Effect On North Dakota Politics, Nick "Nick" Nelson

Political Science Theses and Capstones

North Dakota’s oil boom is causing some of its countries to experience significant population increases. I study the effect this is having on the politics of North Dakota. To assess the effect of increased oil production on the population of counties and its effect on the politics of those counties I gathered statistics at the county level in the areas of oil production, populations including total, black, Hispanic, white, and male populations, and voting behavior (Republican or Democrat) from the United State Census, the North Dakota Secretary of State, and the North Dakota Industrial Commission, Department of Natural Resources. My …

Latino Party Id: Inherited Or Learned?, Dylan Davison

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The purpose of this research is to find out whether political party identification is learned or inherited in Latino voters in the United States. Latino voters are the largest growing minority group in the United States. Understanding this growing block of voters will yield dividends in elections to come. I utilized a 2008 dataset from a post‐election survey by Pew Research group on Latino voters. I hypothesize that recent immigrants learn their party identification while more established Latino voters are more likely to have inherited their political views. If Latino party identification is learned it is more likely that they …

Parties, Leaders, And The National Debt, Daniel Palazzolo

Political Science Faculty Publications

There is widespread agreement that the United States is headed for a train wreck of massive proportions if its leaders do not address the problem of the national debt. However, the nation's leaders appear unable to agree to terms about a potential solution, a dynamic that poses fundamental concerns about the capacity of the constitutional system and ability of citizens to self-govern. The conventional wisdom holds that politicians are chiefly concerned about reelection, so they refuse to make tough choices that might offend constituencies and powerful interest groups. Of particular consequence is the growing polarization of the parties and inability …

The Filibuster And Reconciliation: The Future Of Majoritarian Lawmaking In The U.S. Senate, Tonja Jacobi, Jeff Vandam

Faculty Articles

Passing legislation in the United States Senate has become a de facto super-majoritarian undertaking, due to the gradual institutionalization of the filibuster — the practice of unending debate in the Senate. The filibuster is responsible for stymieing many legislative policies, and was the cause of decades of delay in the development of civil rights protection. Attempts at reforming the filibuster have only exacerbated the problem. However, reconciliation, a once obscure budgetary procedure, has created a mechanism of avoiding filibusters. Consequently, reconciliation is one of the primary means by which significant controversial legislation has been passed in recent years — including …

Gaming Direct Democracy: How Voters’ Views Of Job Performance Interact With Elite Endorsements Of Ballot Measures, Craig M. Burnett, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

Voters are thought to rely on elite endorsements in helping them make decisions. Their ability to use these endorsements is especially important in direct democracy, since ballot measures are complex policy proposals that lack partisan cues printed on the ballot. Using an exit survey, we look at California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s endorsement of four Indian gaming measures on the ballot during the presidential primary election of 2008. We find that voters who had knowledge of the elite endorsement differed little from those who did not. We show, however, that Schwarzenegger’s endorsement was conditionally related to support for the measures, depending …

United States Export Policy Of Fighter Jets To East Asia, Andrew Derewiany

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

What explains fighter jet export policy to East Asia? The decision to export fighter jets from the United States (U.S.) to foreign countries is an important part of domestic and foreign policy. James Rosenau’s theory of linkage politics suggests that domestic and international variables may work together in complex ways to develop U.S. export policy of fighter jets. This thesis uses a comparative case study approach to examine the domestic and international factors that are influential in determining U.S. export policy of fighter jets to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The political actors involved in making U.S. fighter jet export …

Playing Politics With Rape: Republican Apologia In The 2012 Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization, Kelsey Deforest

Undergraduate Research Awards

"During the second half of 2012, heightened scrutiny was applied to Republican politicians’ discussion of sexual assault. This wave of interrogation, though, began too late to affect the debates over the 2012 Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization. This paper will problematize these debates by analyzing the rhetoric of self-defense used by Republican legislators in the House of Representatives to defend their VAWA Reauthorization bill. By applying a feminist critical discourse analysis to the final VAWA Reauthorization debate held on May 16, 2012, this paper shows that the actions of the Republican legislators are rooted in a desire to protect the …

Ethics In Public Management, H. George Frederickson, Richard K. Ghere

Political Science Faculty Publications

This volume follows two earlier projects undertaken by Frederickson (1993) and Frederickson and Ghere (2005) to present collections of theoretical essays and empirical analyses on administrative ethics. Three years before the publication of the first volume —Frederickson's Ethics and Public Administration — the National Commission on the Public Service released Leadership for America (also known as the Volcker Commission Report) that attested to "the quiet crisis" in government whereby "too many of the best of the nation's senior executives are ready to leave government, and not enough of its most talented young people are willing to join. This erosion in …

Ngo Leadership And Human Rights, Richard K. Ghere

Political Science Faculty Publications

This book provides preliminary understanding of what the term NGO means; explains how "human rights" affect NGO missions; and focuses on the meaning of "leadership" in NGOs in comparison to private sector and government agency leadership. It also encourages readers with vocational aspirations in human rights work to think strategically in preparing for their professional futures.

The Relationship Between Comprehensive Budgeting And Party Polarization In The U.S. Congress, Anna Eames

CMC Senior Theses

The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 made the production of an annual comprehensive budgetary framework the central focus of the federal budget process. Before 1974, the budget process had allowed legislation from each of the revenue committees and each of the appropriations subcommittees to come to the floor separately. Congress judged the merits of individual programs without considering the overall budget. The 1974 budget act changed the organizational ethos of the budget process from incremental change to comprehensive review and from fragmented, ad hoc decision making to coordinated decision making. It helped sort members into ideologically homogenous …

Latinos And The California Gop: A Troubled Courtship, Hannah Burak

CMC Senior Theses

The Republican Party of California faces a serious demographic challenge as a burgeoning Latino population threatens to turn this majority-minority state a darker shade of blue. The purpose of my research and of this thesis is to explore the relationship between Latino voters in California and the Republican Party and to draw conclusions about the most viable and proven means of attracting Latino votes to Republican candidates. The Latino vote is by no means a lost cause for Republicans. My research supports several claims, which are laid out here and discussed throughout the paper. The first is that the Republican …