Political Science Commons^™

A Middle East Quandary: A Comparative Analysis Of State Creation And Political Regime Formation In Egypt, Iraq, And Lebanon, Laura Cianciolo

Government and International Relations Honors Papers

Democracy is at a crossroad. At the start of the twenty-first century analysts noted that though in the 1920s only a very small number of sovereign states were led by regimes that had the basic components necessary to qualify as a democracy, by 1990 that number had increased to 69, and by 2012 to 117. Between the years 2005 and 2013, however, political rights and civil liberties underwent substantial setbacks. Of no less significance, hopes that Middle Eastern states would begin their transitions toward democracy as a result of the spring revolts of 2011 experienced a very short lifespan.

My …

The Transformation And Demise Of Terrorist Organizations: Causes And Categories, Devyani M. Mehta

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In the recent years, the world has experienced devastating losses due to terrorist attacks. Research in the fields of causes of terrorism is abundant, but the amount of research on the end of terrorism does not equally measure up. This paper aims to add to the research focused on analyzing the factors which cause terrorist groups to transition away from violence.

This paper introduces an original categorization of the factors which generate this transition. Factors belong to two categories: internal --decisions made by the terrorist organization, and external--actions or features pertaining to organization outside of non-terrorist organizations. These factors will …

Is The Doctor In? The Effects Of Emigration On The Health Care Systems In Poland And Romania, Gabriela B. Wolk

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The “brain drain” phenomenon encompasses the mass movement of highly educated individuals. Highly-skilled and well-educated migrants are moving to more developed and urban settings, often in search of a higher standard of living and better wages. Since joining the European Union and the Schengen Agreement, Poland and Romania have experienced significant emigration which has subsequently affected their health care systems. Motivations for emigrating from these two countries and the effects emigration has had on patients and other doctors will be considered. The paper also seeks to compare policy responses to the mass medical emigration phenomenon in both countries, as well …

A Comparative Study: Women's Rights In Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, And Tajikistan, Megan A. Ginn

Honors Undergraduate Theses

After 1991 five countries emerged out of the fall of the Soviet Union to create a new region: Central Asia. No longer dominated by Soviet rule these countries fought to overcome barriers to independence and struggled to be seen by the international community as developed countries. However, these countries were far from developed and had to pay the high cost of human rights to get what they desired. This study researches and analyzes how Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan have traded the rights of women to achieve a placebo of development. Two of the largest violations of women’s rights that have …

Austerity And Its Effects On Neoliberal Industrial Policy: The Case Of Enterprise Policy In Ireland, Ewan Macdonald, John Hogan, Brendan O'Rourke

Conference papers

This paper seeks to explore the logic of actually existing austerity and its effects on the development of enterprise policy in the Republic of Ireland. It asks the following question: in what manner has enterprise policy been affected by the Irish experience of austerity? Neoliberal austerity is not merely state parsimony; after all the austerity of post-WWII United Kingdom, with its frugal construction of national health and welfare systems, is far from the austerity advocated by Merkel and Cameron today. In light of this, there are a large number of factors which have led to the unique development of actually …

"A Comparative Analysis Of Collective Action Frames In Nosamo And The Tea Party", Shyam Sriram

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

No abstract provided.

Islamism In Western Europe: Milli Görüş In Germany, Gonul Tol, Yasemin Akbaba

Political Science Faculty Publications

This study is an inquiry into the nature of the Islamic Community Milli Görüş (Islamische Gemeinschaft Milli Görüş -IGMG) movement in Germany. The movement has been identified as an “Islamist extremist group” by the German Ministry of the Interior in 2005. Germany has the highest number of Turkish immigrants in Western Europe and is home to Milli Görüş’s headquarters. We ask whether radicalization is a response to social, economic and political marginalization of Milli Görüş members in Germany. The data collected during the field research conducted in Germany between the years of 2004 and 2007 was used to explore radicalization …

Why The Welfare State Persist: A Comparative Analysis Of Varying Welfare States, Xavieria Jeffers

Honors College Theses

The welfare state is a component of many government systems in which the government provides social services to the citizens of a state. The welfare state varies from state to state and is dependent upon different factors such as the demand from citizens, the unemployment rate, and the number of retired citizens. I believe that the welfare state has become institutionalized in economies and governments around the world making it impossible for governments to remove the welfare state. In a comparative analysis I will examine the demands for the welfare state in the United States, Germany, Denmark, United Kingdom and …

The Politics Of Mental Health: A Comparative Study Of Policy Adoption And Implementation In Germany And Japan, Luis Diego Campos

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In the aftermath of World War II, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan followed Germany’s blueprint in fashioning a universal health coverage system. Comparisons to Germany’s welfare state during this same time period reveal markedly different social and mental health policy practices, as Germany’s Christian Democratic Union and Social Democratic Party cooperated toward progressive policies while the Liberal Democratic Party largely neglected social welfare expansion. The effect of these practices is reflected in budgetary provisions, institutionalization practices, and mental health epidemiology. This research finds that a favorable economic climate allowed the Liberal Democratic Party to politically isolate the Social Democratic …

Mass Fears, Strong Leaders And The Risk Of Renewed Conflict: Three Essays On Post-Conflict Elections, Anup Phayal

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

Countries emerging out of armed conflicts face immense challenges in their efforts to build electoral democracies. Contrary to our intuition that elections can transform violent competition to peaceful political contests, past research suggests that holding post-conflict elections only increases the chance of renewed violence. Why are elections unable to build sustainable democracies as expected? In this dissertation, I examine the question by focusing on two levels of analysis. First, I study the effects of violence on political behavior of mass publics at the individual level using the World Values survey Dataset. I argue that citizens are more inclined to support …

Crackdown And Consent: China’S War On Terror And The Strategic Creation Of A Public Discourse In The U.S., Kehaulani R. Jai

Scripps Senior Theses

Scholars have extensively detailed China’s conflation of the Uyghur issue in Xinjiang with the international war on terror following September 11, 2001. Less studied is how the U.S. responded to China’s framing of the Uyghur as terrorists, and of the Chinese government’s characterization of Xinjiang as a region fraught with violence and extremism. On the whole, scholars who have addressed this latter issue conclude that China successfully coopted the U.S., and consequently cracked down on Xinjiang without substantial international outrage. On the basis of a review of official U.S. documents before and after 9/11, I argue that the U.S. response …

Mapuche Resilience: Environmental Justice In Chile, Hannah N. Lussier

ENV 434 Environmental Justice

This paper presents a close analysis of the Mapuche Conflict and its implications from an Environmental Justice perspective. It serves to outline the plight of the Mapuche, a South American indigenous group, in their continued struggle to gain the rights to autonomic control over their ancestral territory from the Chilean government. By utilizing a holistic approach to research, this paper serves to provide a background on the conflict as well as to incorporate claims to justice. It chronicles the depth and breadth of media attention on the issue by incorporating perspectives from scholarly articles, news sources and social media platforms. …

Revolutionary Leaders And Mass Killing, Nam Kyu Kim

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

This article argues that revolutionary leaders are more willing to commit mass killing than nonrevolutionary leaders. Revolutionary leaders are more ideologically committed to transforming society, more risk tolerant, and more likely to view the use of violence as appropriate and effective. Furthermore, such leaders tend to command highly disciplined and loyal organizations, built in the course of revolutionary struggles, that can perpetrate mass killing. This study uses time series cross-sectional data from 1955 to 2004 to demonstrate that revolutionary leaders are more likely to initiate genocide or politicide than nonrevolutionary leaders. The violent behaviors of revolutionary leaders are not limited …

Contrasting American And Chinese Exceptionalism : Representations Of Political Corruption, Tatiana Rice

Honors Program Theses

This thesis compares media portrayals of political corruption in the United States of America versus the People’s Republic of China. Political corruption is considerably understudied and poses a serious threat to the social, political, and economic wellbeing of all nations. By studying each country’s corresponding media portrayals, this thesis was able to identify how seemingly opposing styles of government and culture framed political corruption in their own nation and abroad. In examining each country’s national newspapers, this study resulted in two major findings: 1) each country had differing ideas of corruption; and 2) these portrayals played a role in framing …

A Conflict-Sensitive Approach To Conditional Cash Transfers In Indonesia: Can Ccts Reduce Conflict?, Glenys Kirana

CMC Senior Theses

Given that conditional cash transfers (CCTs) can be a very effective social welfare program to reduce poverty and improve education and health outcomes, but may exacerbate conflict, this thesis addresses strategies for conflict-sensitive formulation and implementation of CCTs in Indonesia. This thesis raises the immediate need to address poverty in Indonesia and seeks to learn from the successes and challenges of other CCTs, such as those enacted in Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, and the Philippines. This thesis also looks into existing literature comparing the effectiveness of CCTs to other social protection programs (SPPs) and finds that CCT is one of the …

Public Opinion And The President's Use Of Executive Orders: Aggregate- And Individual-Level Analyses Across Time, Brett Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Presidential approval ratings are a political resource that presidents and their advisors hope to influence through strategic action in order to achieve their policy goals (McAvoy 2008, 284). Through 1999, scholarly literature had largely ignored the president's use of unilateral powers. Since Moe and Howell (1999a, 1999b), however, the literature on the unilateral presidency has expanded rapidly. Despite the rapid growth of literature examining the unilateral presidency, and 45 years of presidential approval ratings literature, literature examining the link between the president's use of unilateral powers and subsequent presidential approval ratings is virtually nonexistent. Existing research has not statistically examined …

Examining Human Capital Capacity’S Influence On Human Development And Poverty Reduction In Sub-Saharan Africa, Theodore J. Davis Jr.

International Journal of African Development

The aim of this paper is to examine and expand our focus on human capital capacity building as a foundation for poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa. The data showed significant differences in the human capital capacity building characteristics as measured by demographic, education and gender equality characteristics. In analyzing select human capital capacity building markers, the findings suggest that the educational indicators were among the strongest in explaining the variation in human development in Sub-Saharan Africa. The findings showed that gender inequality was a serious inhibitor of human development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Overall, the Sub-Saharan nations with the lowest level …

Authoritarian Member States In International Organizations, Matt Barg

Master's Theses

This thesis investigates under which conditions do authoritarian Member States exist in International Organizations that require democratic governance in their treaty law. The European Union is used as a case study along with two of its Member States that are in the process of transitioning to democracy from previous authoritarian regimes—Hungary and Romania. This thesis employs stealth authoritarian theory to analyze how a democratizing Member State may violate these laws and revert to authoritarian governance. It also critiques international enforcement mechanisms to consider their effectiveness to enforce their laws and norms as well as prevent an authoritarian reversal. Finally, cultural …

A Comparative Case Study Of Georgia Delegations At The 2012 National Party Conventions, Carolyn S. Carlson, Jeff R. Dewitt, Kerwin Swint

Georgia Journal of Public Policy

From August 26 to September 8, nine political science students and four supervising faculty traveled from Kennesaw State University to the 2012 Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention as part of special topics course on a course titled “Party Conventions Field Study”. While in Tampa and Charlotte, the students and faculty immersed themselves in a “real world” educational environment and in doing so gained extraordinary first-hand exposure to a fundamental, yet not well understood, part of the American political process. Students directly engaged with convention proceedings and participants, primarily the Georgia state party delegations, and implemented pre-approved research …

The Role Of The State, Multinational Oil Companies, International Law & The International Community: Intersection Of Human Rights & Environmental Degradation Climate Change In The 21st Century Caused By Traditional Extractive Practices, The Amazon Rainforest, Indigenous People And Universal Jurisdiction To Resolve The Accountability Issue, Marcela Cabrera Luna

Master's Theses

Local, national and international conventions that protect indigenous sovereignty and their territories, where many of the resources are extracted from by multinational corporations (MNCs) particularly oil, the number one commodity of the world and cause of climate change, continue to be jeopardized because of the lack of a clear international legal framework that can protect them and potentially hold multinationals accountable for their actions. These practices are causing not only environmental issues to the indigenous and surrounding communities, but climate change is in fact, the real human rights issue of the 21^st century and it affects everyone. By using …

Evolution Of A Nation After A Dictatorship: How Law, Politics And Society Of The 1973 Dictatorship In Uruguay And Of The Subsequent Return Of Democracy In 1985, Potentially Helped Evolve The Nation Of Today., Jonathan A. Fein Proaño

Master's Theses

In 1973, Uruguay’s president authored a coup d’état with the military and changed the history and fabric of Uruguay. Once democracy returned to Uruguay in 1985, it was a chance to see if an evolution of the law, politics and society would occur. This thesis aims to analyze and understand the patterns of change and de-evolution or evolution that happened during the dictatorship and then over the last 30 years. I break down the process of changes that happened legally and politically, how the dictatorship and its leaders used law to destroy rule of law, and how society changed.

This …

Understanding Transitional Justice And Its Two Major Dilemmas, Jared Bell

Journal of Interdisciplinary Conflict Science

Transitional justice is an ever growing field and greatly intersects with conflict science and peace studies. With the horrific crimes committed during World War II and the latter half of the 20^th century societies now more than ever before are devising processes, mechanisms, and policies to move past gross human rights violations or communal violence. However, these mechanisms much like anything else are not perfect and come with a variety of dilemmas. In particular two main dilemmas plague transitional justice which this paper aims to deal with: Getting to Truth and Reality versus Expectation. Within the context of …

The Chinese Model Of Development And Its Implications, He Li

Political Science Faculty Publications

At the end of the Cold War, scholars were pondering how far Western ideas would spread in an international environment defined by “the end of history”. China’s rapid and continuous growth in the past three decades alters this backdrop. Today, the debate seems to be on how far Chinese ideas (also known as the “Beijing Consensus”) could reach. This paper focuses on the following aspects of the Chinese model of development and its implications: What does the China model contain? What are major critiques and limitations of the China model? Is the Chinese model applicable to other nations? It should …

Blown Away: How China Outsmarts Wto Rulings In The Wind Industry, Seung-Youn Oh

Political Science Faculty Research and Scholarship

Through a study of China’s wind turbine sector, this paper demonstrates how China liberally implements industrial policies and then removes them when the WTO disputes them. China’s convenient compliance with the WTO rulings reflects Beijing’s realpolitik navigation through the organization’s dispute-resolution process, rather than socialization to international norms.

Competing For Attention: A Comparative Study Of Social Movements And News Media In Abortion Debates, Katherine Eugene Lebreton Hunt

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Why do some social movements in abortion debates get more attention from the news media than others? Do movements that support the status quo receive more attention than those opposing the status quo? Through quantitative content analysis of eight major newspapers in South Korea, Ireland, and Canada and fieldwork in South Korea and Ireland, I theorize that antistatus quo groups – whether they are for or against abortion rights – may reopen debate conditions in their countries by strategically using international human rights norms and frames and gaining standing in the news media in environments that tend to be hostile …

Justice For Border Crossing Peoples, David Watkins

Political Science Faculty Publications

This chapter seeks to advance the conceptual and normative analysis of what Rogers Smith (2014) calls “appropriately differentiated citizenship” for a particular category of would-be border crossers who have so far been absent from the normative literature on immigration and exclusion: border crossing peoples.

Such peoples are defined by a longstanding history of crossing a particular international border for reasons — cultural, political, and/or economic — central to their collective identity. National territorial rights theorists such as David Miller argue that restrictive immigration policies can be justified via a collectivist Lockean analogy: Private property rights are to individuals as national …

Reproductive Rights In Latin America: A Case Study Of Guatemala And Nicaragua, Katherine W. Bogen

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

A lack of access to contraceptives and legal abortion for women throughout the nations of Nicaragua and Guatemala creates critical health care problems. Moreover, rural and underprivileged women in Guatemala and Nicaragua are facing greater limitations to birth control access, demonstrating a classist aspect in the global struggle for female reproductive rights. Although some efforts have been made over the past half-century to initiate a dialogue on the failure of medical care in these nations to adequately address issues of maternal mortality and reproductive rights, the women's reproductive health movements of Nicaragua and Guatemala have struggled to reach an effective …

The Liberal As An Enemy Of Queer Justice, Craig Schamel

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

Abstract

Liberalism as a historical mode of the political is the context in which the movement and ensuing struggle for queer justice emerged in most Western countries. The terminology, practices, tendencies, beliefs, ethics, laws, and patterns of political and social life which have been determined by this mode of the political, it is argued, are inimical to queer justice and render its achievement impossible. Liberalism as a mode of the political is approached from below, from knowledge gained in practical experience in queer groups which considered themselves revolutionary at least to some degree, and from the effects on such groups …

Institutionalizing Freedom As Nondomination: Democracy And The Role Of The State, David Watkins

Political Science Faculty Publications

This article critically examines neo-republican democratic theory, as articulated by Philip Pettit, with respect to its capacity to address some of the pressing challenges of our times. While the neo-republican focus on domination has great promise, it mistakenly commits to the position that democracy—the primary tool with which we fight domination—is limited to state activity. Examining this error helps us make sense of two additional problems with his theory: an overestimation of the capacity of legislative bodies to identify sufficient responses to practices of domination, and the potential conflict between avoiding state domination of the general citizenry and avoiding state …

Youth Participatory Democracy And Political Choices: Views From Ethekweni, Anthony L. Wagner

Student Publications

In this research project I am seeking to gauge youth participation in and attitudes towards the South African democratic process. As in many democratic societies, there is a perception by some that the youth of South Africa are apathetic to issues related to politics and government. In this study I seek to evaluate youth perspectives of democracy based on what they have been taught in school and at home, levels of youth political participation, attitudes towards the African National Congress’s (ANC) dominance of South African politics, perceptions of political alternatives to the ANC, young people’s engagement with nongovernmental organizations in …