Political Science Commons^™

Identifying Potential Pork-Barrel Legislation Using Machine Learning: A Preliminary Analysis, Sunil Green

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

Pork-barrel legislation has been criticized by some as an excessive and potentially corrupt use of Congressional appropriations. The task of finding the specific parts of legislation that have been “pork-barreled”, however, requires many hours of labor by policy researchers. Using data from government watchdogs and machine learning algorithms, the research explores the idea of creating a model to flag specific line items of appropriations bills for policy researchers to further explore as potential pork-barrel legislation. The model constructed uses data from the Earmark Database by Taxpayers for Common Sense, and the Congressional Pig Book by Citizens Against Government Waste to …

Conservatism, Collaboration, And Capacity: Political Explanations For Canada’S Shift In Immigrant Admissions Logic, Jaidyn Appel

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

Canada is often regarded as the United States’ friendlier neighbor to the north, but how welcoming is it really? A critical analysis of immigration and citizenship policy throughout Canadian history reveals that Canada may not be the inclusive member of the world community it is often conceptualized as. This paper examines some of the recent key changes in Canadian immigration policy and their broader contexts, while benchmarking the policies against two leading scholars' thoughts on how the relative presence of certain political ideologies in a country drives its immigration policies to the left or right of the political spectrum. As …

Studying The Economic Impact Of The Demonetization Across Indian Districts, Arnav Joshi

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

This thesis studies the economic impact of the Indian demonetization which was a unique monetary event that made 86.9 percent of the total currency in circulation illegal tender overnight. The decision to demonetize high-value currency notes was taken by the Indian government on November 8th, 2016, leading to a severe shortage of cash. This thesis tries to analyze how the impact of the demonetization differed across districts in India and how the characteristics of those districts pertaining to education, electricity and tap water access, employment, and technology access can help explain these differences. The thesis uses satellite data on human-generated …

Bias In The Jury Box: The Sociological Determinants Of Jury Selection For Capital Cases In North Carolina, Alessandra Quattrocchi

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

An evaluation of four Wake County capital cases from 2014-2018 reveals the disparate effects that the jury selection process had on Black and female potential jurors and especially on Black female potential jurors. The requirement that capital jurors be willing and able to sentence death systematically excluded Blacks and females, with Black females excused for this reason at a rate over three times higher than White males. Black potential jurors not struck for death qualification were disproportionately excluded by prosecutorial peremptory strikes at a rate nearly two times greater than Whites. Final analyses conclude that Black females had significantly lower …

Early Childhood Intervention And Income Inequality: An Analysis On The Intergenerational Mobility Of Head Start Participants, Paul Hinton

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

The Head Start program is an early childhood intervention program funded by the federal government. Designed for low-income families, it promotes school readiness among its participants. In my research, I examine the effects of Head Start on the intergenerational mobility of its participants. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) and the NLSY Child and Young Adult Supplement (CNLSY), I measure the degree of earnings persistence between parents and their children for students in preschool and Head Start. I find that participation in Head Start is associated with an increase in mobility, which remains true after controlling …

“Pure People” And “Corrupt Elites:” Corruption Talk In The 2020 Election, Milan Loewer

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

The word “corruption” has two separate but interrelated meanings. The first kind of corruption refers specifically to an abuse of public office for private gain; the second is broader and indicates a disjunction between a political reality and the ideal to which that reality ought to conform. This paper explores the role of various forms of “corruption talk” in the 2020 presidential election. The first part of the paper examines the “supply side,” looking at the kinds of “corruption narratives” that politicians offered in 2020. Using natural language processing, I analyze how Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders spoke …

The Religious Seculars: How Does Yom Kippur Impact Electoral Turnout?, Gall Sigler

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

Does Yom Kippur impact electoral turnout in religious and secular Jewish communities in Israel? By collecting data on electoral behavior in elections to local councils from 1983 to 2018 in Jewish-secular, Jewish-religious and non-Jewish municipalities, this research attempts to elucidate the relationship between the communal Yom Kippur experience and electoral turnout. This research finds that the Yom Kippur experience appears to decrease turnout in secular municipalities, while no statistically significant impact was observed in religious municipalities. Research on the psychological significance of novelty and religious events, as well as ethnographic analysis of Israel, suggests that the Yom Kippur experience undermines …

Summary Report Of Discussions At The Forum “Nepali Diaspora Organizations In North America: Achievements, Opportunities, And Challenges”, Coppell, Texas, Usa July 2022, Ambika P. Adhikari

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

The forum “Nepali Diaspora Organizations in North America: Achievements, Opportunities and Challenges” was held at the annual convention of the Association of Nepalis in the Americas (ANA) in Coppell, TX, USA on July 2, 2022. Nepalese Society of Texas (NST) hosted the convention and forum. As studies related to diaspora have become important topics in the fields of development, community culture, sociology and anthropology, ANA decided to include this topic in the forums organized at the national convention.

The global Nepali diaspora population in 2022 is estimated at 800,000. Although no authoritative statistics is available, the Nepali diaspora in North …

Hybrid U-Net: Semantic Segmentation Of High-Resolution Satellite Images To Detect War Destruction, Shima Nabiee, Matthew Harding, Jonathan Hersh, Nader Bagherzadeh

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Destruction caused by violent conflicts play a big role in understanding the dynamics and consequences of conflicts, which is now the focus of a large body of ongoing literature in economics and political science. However, existing data on conflict largely come from news or eyewitness reports, which makes it incomplete, potentially unreliable, and biased for ongoing conflicts. Using satellite images and deep learning techniques, we can automatically extract objective information on violent events. To automate this process, we created a dataset of high-resolution satellite images of Syria and manually annotated the destroyed areas pixel-wise. Then, we used this dataset to …

Chinese-Backed Fintech Lending Boom: How Did Indonesia Respond?, Angela Tritto, Yujia He, Victoria Amanda Junaedi

Diplomacy and International Commerce Reports

Peer-to-peer (P2P) online lending has the potential to boost innovation and financial inclusion in emerging markets, yet it can also incur investment and borrower-related risks, such as privacy breaches.

Driven by regulation control in China, Chinese investments flocked to Indonesia, causing a rapid expansion of online lending platforms.

Similar to what happened in China prior to the regulatory crackdown, the P2P lending boom in Indonesia saw a rise in unethical and illegal business practices. The government responded by creating new regulations and institutions to mitigate risks without stifling the potential for financial inclusion.

A proactive approach towards monitoring and regulating …

Urban Utopia Or Pipe Dream? Examining Chinese-Invested Smart City Development In Southeast Asia, Yujia He, Angela Tritto

Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce Faculty Publications

With increasing public–private partnership and international cooperation in smart city development across the Global South, Chinese firms are poised to take advantage of growing business opportunities, a situation that few studies have examined. This empirical case study of the Forest City, a Chinese-invested greenfield smart city project in Iskandar Malaysia, begins to fill that gap. This megaproject represents the coming together of overlapping economic development interests of the local authorities and the profit motivations of the Chinese investor. However, the project’s use of the ‘smart city’ discourse contrasts with the reality of limited technology adoption. Its visibility and considerable socio-economic …

Impact And Enlightenment Of Eu’S “Industry 5.0” To High-Quality Development Of China’S Manufacturing—Research On Application Of Think Tank Double Helix Methodology, Lu Zhao, Dawei Song, Feng Zhang, Jiaofeng Pan

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

The world is experiencing a great change with the combined impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the post-epidemic era, the world's major economies have begun to plan their strategic adjustments, economic revival and transformation. Industry 5.0, as the EU's new strategy to plan the "New Industrial Revolution" and promote industrial transformation in Europe, has raised wide attentions in the world and has become a hotspot of think tank research. Guided by the think tank double helix methodology, this study constructed a cognitive framework to study industrial strategy and its related complex system issues such as international relations, science and technology …

Best Cities For Affordable Homeownership In The Mountain West, Kelliann Beavers, Olivia K. Cheche, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Housing & Real Estate

This fact sheet highlights data on the best cities for affordable homeownership in the Mountain West, based on the SmartAsset report, “Best Cities to Buy an Affordable Family Home – 2021 Edition.” The report is SmartAsset’s second annual study, following the 2020 report, and includes data on 100 of the largest cities in the United States. This fact sheet highlights the rank, index, down payment-to-income ratio, housing costs as a percent of income, and four-year change in homeownership rate within each of the 15 Mountain West cities included in the original report.

Perceptions Of Economic Vulnerability And Public Opinion In The United States: A Theoretical, Historical, And Quantitative Approach, Cody R. Melcher

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation combines three related essays that analyze the effect of the perception of economic vulnerability on the social and political attitudes of Americans. Through a heterodox reading of W.E.B. Du Bois’s intellectual work and political career in the latter half of his life, the first essay develops the theoretical thrust of the dissertation. It is argued that Du Bois primarily grounds white supremacy in an elementary feature of capitalism: the fact that survival under capitalism presumes the successful engagement, either directly or indirectly, with the labor market. Due to the historical legacy of slavery, however, labor market competition in …

Interns And Institutions: Interactions Between Unpaid Interns And Public Policy, Hannah G. Waterman

Honors Projects

Political, and especially Congressional, internships are all but mandatory to launch a career in politics. This text examines the demographics of how these internships are dispersed, how they are paid, who is paid, and how this manifests in full-time Congressional staff demographics. Data shows that both paid and unpaid Congressional internships belong disproportionately to white students. Top staff in the House of Representatives is similarly disproportionately white. The text also examines the inherent danger of working in Congress and the broader case for paid internships.

Inaccessible Interpolated Imagery: How Coffee Farmers In The State Of Chiapas Might Access Political Economic Opportunity Through Representation, Paolo Fiann Bicchieri

Master's Theses

Here is a useful parable to boil down the idea of this project and set the tone: when one goes to the bar to tell a story about a fight at the bar, they would never venture to place themselves as the hero of the brawl, taking out three drunkards in a single punch, unless they were really in the bar, at that time, fighting a good fight. One would never do this as the bartender, locals, and regulars would all know if this were the case or not. Yet transnational corporations, governments, and even consumers do this all the …

Reforming The United States’ Currency Production, William Cather

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Since the 1980s, the debate about the one-cent piece’s production and use has been discussed throughout relatively recent Congressional history; and has involved economic, financial, industry-based, as well as numismatic groups to weigh in on the topic. The question arises: Why have other countries successfully changed their lower-denomination currency and converted their economic system into one that incorporates cash-rounding while the United States has struggled to do so?

By observing international examples of the obsoletion of low-denomination coinage and the implementation of cash-rounding, the proposed economic and financial reform has proved to work as an economically-sound alternative to the current …

Feed-In Tariffs And Sustainable Energy: Why Different Oecd Governments Support Sustainable Energy At Different Rates Through Feed-In Tariffs, Joshua M. Grahame

Business and Economics Honors Papers

Why is it that different governments in the OECD support sustainable energy at different rates? In the effort to explain this difference, Feed-in-Tariffs (FITs) will be closely examined to see if it can explain the significant portion of the variation among countries. This project serves as a continuation of previous scholars' works, to better understand the variation between countries in adopting renewable energy, even though all members of the OECD have pledged that by 2030 half of their energy will come from sustainable energy. Whereas previous research considered data ending in 2012 and looked at countries outside of the OECD, …

Nevada Economic Development And Public Policy 2022-2026: A Sustainable Future For All Nevadans, The Lincy Institute, Brookings Mountain West

Policy Briefs and Reports

This report evaluates economic development efforts in the State of Nevada since the 2011 publication of Unify, Regionalize, Diversify: An Economic Development Agenda for Nevada; assesses demographic and economic trends for Nevada and its regions; examines how state and federal actions since the onset of COVID-19 can position Nevada and its regions to address long-standing economic, educational, and social deficits; and offers policy recommendations to be implemented in the next four years to facilitate a sustainable future for all Nevadans.

Support New Business To Solve Old Problems With Kentucky’S Keystone Waste From Bourbon & Brewing, Samuel C. Kessler

Commonwealth Policy Papers

Provided here is a policy solution from the backside of Kentucky bourbon and brewing to upcycle Kentucky’s “keystone” wastes and grow businesses in the process. Potential effects range from removing the bottleneck on bourbon production and producing GHG-friendly biogas to lowering the price of milk.This full whitepaper brief provides an incentive model for keystone wastes which have a provider and a use. It is equally applicable for policymakers or advocates wishing to place a policy incentive behind waste-to-product upcycling, businesses involved with methane sequestration & renewable biogas energy, and shifting regulatory and penalizing models of pollution into incentive model for …

Biden’S Options: Policy Recommendations On The Us-China Trade War, Marley Taylor Belanger

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

As talks of unprecedented inflation and the long-term impact of the pandemic are on the rise in the United States, it is critical to understand how the foreign policy choices of the US Government ultimately impact its economy. This paper aims to evaluate the impact of the economic tensions between the US and China as a result of the ongoing US-China Trade War. To examine the viability of proposed options, a cost-benefit analysis of Biden’s policy options is implemented based on a framework of escalation, de-escalation, or modification of the current US-China economic policy initiative. The analysis of these proposals …

The Great Resignation: A Content Analysis Of News Sources' Portrayals Of The Covid-19 Labor Shortage., Mackenzie Williams

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

When workers left the labor market in large numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic, proclamations of a labor shortage emerged extensively throughout the news. In this study, I analyze the coverage of the worker shortage among three news sources with different political orientations. Several themes emerged from analyzing a total of 75 articles. The findings showed that the perspective shown in the article, the cause of the labor shortage, restaurant worker portrayal, support of solutions, and opinion of the labor shortage all differed based on the political identity of the news source. This research supports previous findings that show there is …

Why Renegotiation?: Renewal Of The South Korea-Chile Bilateral Free Trade Agreement, Montserrat Bugueno

International Studies (MA) Theses

This thesis project explores the motivations behind the bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) renegotiation between Chile and South Korea. Existing studies have examined the reasons and outcomes of creating the initial Chile-South Korea FTA, but they have not focused on renegotiations between the two countries. A few investigations on renegotiations have focused on diversifying their exports and expanding their markets in each other's regions. However, most research lacks further exploration of both countries' market security concerns. By analyzing official government documents and conducting three semi-structured interviews with government officials and experts in the field, I argue that the current protectionist …

The Expansion Of Nocs: What Strengthening State-Owned Enterprises Means For Global Energy, Alexander L. Fretz

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The rise of National Oil Companies (NOCs) in the 20th century has been well documented. However, little work has been done with respect to how these entities have evolved in the 21st century. This study aims to measure the changing strength of contemporary NOCs by comparing them to their privatized counterparts. Using this comparative analysis, the study will explain the changing global energy landscape and the potential internecine effects on the international system.

The Economic Impact Of U.S. Drone Strikes On Pakistan, Cavika Prashad

Honors College Theses

Drone strikes have a detrimental impact on the region of a nation, especially when the contact is not the targeted threat. When drone strikes are sent out, they result in consequences such as death, infrastructure damage, and consequently, unemployment increases. While proponents of drone strikes say they are precise weapons with little disruption to civilian life, this paper shows that in Pakistan, U.S. drone strikes have had an economic impact, particularly by increasing unemployment. Using an OLS model, the drone data from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and individual survey data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics were used to …

Contextualizing The 2019 “Chile Despertó” Movement: The Impact Of Historical Relational Processes On Mobilization And Repression, Tanya Leon

International Studies (MA) Theses

To expand our theoretical and empirical understanding of mobilization and repression in Latin America, this thesis asks three critical questions. Are economic indicators sufficient predictors of social movement emergence in Latin America? What other factors contribute to large-scale mobilization in Latin America? How do government’s respond to large-scale Latin American social movements? Specifically, when, and why do democratic governments choose to employ repression against social movements? Accordingly, I construct a quantitative model to test the correlation between rise in protest and worsened economic conditions. I apply it to a comprehensive dataset of political events in multiple South American countries throughout …

Anticipatory Intelligence Resilience Modeling Evaluation Of Aspire Research Center, Madeleine Alder

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The analysis of threats and vulnerabilities in a system is essential in developing resilience strategies to strengthen the system’s ability to adapt and succeed. This report delivers a threat analysis of ASPIRE, a research organization centered on engineering solutions for promoting electric vehicle (EV) adoption. ASPIRE, which is an international network of university research partners and comprised primarily of engineering teams, is focused on developing technology that can be used by industry or governmental partners. The threat of low public buy-in for ASPIRE technology is one of the most significant concerns facing the system. Low adoption rates or public resistance …

The Effects Of The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine On Exports To Italy, Stephen Johnson, Ryder Hankins, Nathan Carter

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Italy imported 122,000 tons of soft wheat from Ukraine and 72,000 from Russia. During the current events international food and feed prices have increased by 8 to 22% causing mass shortages around the world. On top of the ethical and moral dilemmas of continuing business with Russia, insurance premiums have jumped 400% for doing business with the invading country.

The Political Pandemic: The Relationship Between Political Leanings, Covid-19, And The Economy In 2020, Garrett Clark

Honors College Theses

The effect of political leanings on the pandemic outcomes, both in terms of the COVID-19 cases and death totals and the extent that the pandemic affected the economy, is the analysis of interest. The literature indicates a relationship between political leanings and the COVID-19 response. Data is gathered from a variety of sources, and a series of regressions are performed to analyze several control variables and determine their significance. The results indicate a relationship between political leanings and COVID-19 outcomes. However, results regarding the effects of politics on the economy are less clear. Possible explanations are provided for the results.

U.S./Russia Export Relationship, Adam Nishino, Mohammad Saad Bin Shahzad, Yonathan Assefa, Trel Lakindanum

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Russia and the United States have a long history of trading as early as 1913. Over the years, Russia has become a notable player in US imports. By using the United States Census database and the Office of the United States Trade Representative database. In short, our research will discuss the trade relationship between Russia and the United States over the last century, through history and data analytics, and its effects on trade and politics to the rest of the world.