Political Science Commons^™

Speaking Up: School Climate And Language Politics In The Trump Era, Mneesha Gellman

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Identity politics are fraught. High school is a prime location where such politics play out and interface with state-dictated norms and values about acceptable social behavior. This article examines identity politics during the Trump era in two far Northern California high schools to better understand the impact on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students. I argue that while the Trump effect allowed hostility towards BIPOC people to be expressed more openly in general, schools can also be sites of resistance to culturecide—the killing of culture—that diminishes the role of minority ontologies and epistemologies in the formation of young …

Sons Of Disobedience And Their Machines: How Sin And Anthropology Can Inform Evangelical Thought About Ai, Gregory S. Mckenzie

Liberty Theological Review

The purpose of this paper is to further discussion about artificial intelligence by examining AI from the perspective of the doctrine of sin. As such, philosophy of mind and theological anthropology, specifically, what it means to be human, the effects of sin, and the consequent social ramifications of AI drive the analysis of this paper. Accordingly, the conclusions of the analysis are that the depravity of fallen humanity is cause for concern in the very programming of AI and serves as a corrupted foundation for artificial machine cognition. Given the fallen nature of human thought, and therefore, fallen AI thought, …

The Struggle For Self-Determination: A Comparative Analysis Of East Timor And Western Sahara, Emma Baratta

Honors Theses

Self-determination is accepted as an international right of all people, yet in many cases it still takes decades of struggle to achieve it. Through comparative analysis of the selfdetermination and independence struggles of East Timor and Western Sahara, conclusions can be drawn as to why some former colonies are able to achieve these goals while others do not. In order to better understand the challenges associated with self-determination, I evaluate the two cases based on four overarching factors which influence the process: statehood criteria and imagined community status, colonialism and occupation, presence of natural resources, and international recognition. I argue …

Unpacking Political Identity In First-Time Voting Christian Women: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Mary Grace Golden

Honors Theses

As political science tends to focus on polling and statistical analysis to examine individuals’ voting behaviors, the reasoning behind constituents’ decision-making process is often left in the dark. This is particularly true in first-time voting women who come from religious backgrounds that uphold complementarian gender values. This study focuses on the following research questions: How do women experience their political identity in relation to their gender identity? How do women experience their political identity in relation to their religious or faith identity? How do women experience their political identity in relation to voting for the first time? I answer these …

Political-Pedagogical Character Of The Collective Actions Of The Popular Bars, Magda Victoria Díaz Alzate Sra, Juan Pablo Menjura Acosta Sr, Maria Clara Fonseca Echeverri Sra

The Qualitative Report

Barrismo is a complex phenomenon and cannot be defined universally. Social representation is based on deficient conceptions that relate it to the use of psychoactive substances and violence. This article presents qualitative research evidence based on the epistemological assumptions of social constructionism, a hermeneutical phenomenological design and the use of qualitative interview and documentary and audiovisual review, to understand the political-pedagogical character of the collective actions of the popular bars of the city of Medellín, Colombia, as practices that contribute to the transformation of the territories. Categories found: i. Bars as popular movements: transition from the brave bar to the …

Tucker Carlson, Oann And A White Nationalist: A Quantified Look At The Disinformation Pipeline Surrounding Covid-19, Juliet Jeske

Capstones

A quantitive exploration of extremist media and its effect on misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Media Consumption Effects On Climate Change Beliefs, Haley Penrod

Honors College Theses

Climate change is in everyday conversation and on the platform for many elections. This issue has grown bigger to where action needs to be taken in order to counteract its effects. One way to examine this subject is through the media. Media allows for an outlet of communication between those with vital information and the public audience. This usage of media can be influential in informing people, as well as changing causation beliefs towards either side. Through this project, the question of how media consumption affects people’s climate change causation beliefs is examined. Using data provided through the 2016 American …

Serving Our Students: Evidence-Based Sex Education Policies And Practices Needed In Ohio, Lily Mckenzie Rosenberg

Honors Projects

Ohio has very minimal state-wide sex education laws, requiring only venereal disease education that has many similarities with abstinence-only education. Abstinence-only education has been shown to be ineffective in delaying first sex and lowering teen STDs, pregnancy, and birth rates. When students receive ineffective (or no) sex education it can impact them in many ways, leaving them unprepared for sexual lives as adults. To analyze the state of sex education in Ohio, this paper will look at sex education throughout Ohio both in law and in practice. I will then explore the impact of these minimal sex education laws on …

Checkerboard Of Interests: Native American Tribes And The Politics Of Land Tenure Reform, Anika Manuel

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

People have long disputed over the financial system constructed for indigenous communities and their resulting economic rights within U.S. native reservations. Indigenous tribes themselves remain split concerning the state of their tribal economies. Although scholars have extensively researched the historical component regarding the construction of the financial system we see in place today, very few have focused on the politics and rationale behind certain policy positions of relevant actors in modern-day society. In an attempt to fill this gap, this research paper will focus on answering two key questions: How has public policy shaped the economic and property rights of …

The Rise And Fall Of The American Fear Of Climate Change: Examining The Trends Of Climate Change Fear In The United States, Hannah Waldorf

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The changing climate is a situation that can be characterized by the threat of dangerous and irreparable changes to the planet. These alterations include an increase in global temperatures, food and water insecurities, extreme weather patterns, social unrest, and political conflict. Fear of the climate’s change has decreased within the past two years (2020 and 2021)—this paper will examine factors that influence the change in American climate fear. Using data from The Chapman University Survey on American Fears (CSAF)—which includes 1,035 participants—it is expected that the current downward trend in climate change fear is rooted in changes of media consumption, …

Media Influences On Fear Of Immigrants, Mira Eissa

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The 2016 election and President Donald Trump’s administration, tapped into U.S. citizens’ polarization regarding the topic of immigration. There was and is a clear negative depiction of immigrants in many different local and national outlets including social media. Using the data collected from Chapman's survey of American fears in 2021, I analyze how fear of immigrants is related to media consumption. Social media and news outlets' coverage of immigrants directly influences the public’s attitudes. Agenda setting, priming, and framing help us understand that news and media construct a perception for people that might not be accurate. Citizens have formed their …

Does Fear Of Government Corruption Affect Voter Turnout?, Ryan Nahmias

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

According to the Survey of American Fears (2020-2021) fear of corrupt government officials is the number one thing Americans fear: 79.6 % of them in fact. In addition, voter turnout is one of the quintessential pillars that allows a democracy to function properly. In this paper I will examine the extent to which fear of government officials’ corruption affects voter turnout. Using the data from the Chapman Survey of American Fears and variables from the American National Election Study between 2020 and 2021, I expect to find a moderately strong relationship between fear of government corruption and voter turnout. Moreover, …

How Has Cultural Marxism Been Used As A Political Tactic In Order To Decrease Trust In Higher Education?, Drew Havnaer

University Honors Theses

This thesis will address the rise in popularity of the political notion of the 'Culture War.' It will trace this theory from its origins in the mid-20th century, through the landmark 1993 Buchanan Culture War speech, and to a modern version, often referred to as the theory of Cultural Marxism. The first part of the argument identifies employment of this theory by modern conservatives, and analyzes how many of us encounter it in our daily life, most prominently in reference to higher education. The second part of the argument targets the effect in colleges and universities specifically. It identifies how …

Leading The Way, But Also Following The Trend: The Slovak National Party, Tim Haughton, Marek Rybář, Kevin Deegan-Krause

Honors Scholarly Publications

Despite spells outside parliament, with its blend of nationalist and populist appeals the Slovak National Party (SNS) has been a prominent fixture on Slovakia’s political scene for three decades. Unlike some of the newer parties in Slovakia and across the region, partly as a product of the point of its (re-)creation, SNS has a comparable organizational density to most established parties in the country and has invested in party branches and recruiting members. Although ordinary members exercised some power and influence during the fissiparous era of the early 2000s, SNS has been notable for the role played by its leader …

Sino-Indian Border Disputes In An Era Of Strategic Expansions, Roman Muzalevsky

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

The June 2020 clash between the People’s Republic of China and India in the disputed Ladakh border area resulted from the strategic expansions of both powers. Like two bubbles expanding in a contained space, these expansions were bound to collide and cause friction. This article explains how the expansions precipitated the incident and might exacerbate border disputes in the future. In pondering implications, it recommends Washington pursue a Eurasia-focused policy embracing the disputed region.

Recruitment Machines, Community Power And Political Return On Investment (Proi): Economic Development Policy In The Age Of Amazon, Eric G. Griego Montoya

Political Science ETDs

ABSTRACT

A fundamental policy choice in economic development among local policy makers is the appropriate mix of “outside” strategies that use incentives to attract companies, and “inside” strategies that invest in smaller and local businesses. Using a mixed-methods research design, including national and state surveys along with qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with policy elites, I examine the role of ideology, elites, community, competition, social capital (trust and influence), and electoral politics in these policy decisions. I use new descriptive theoretical frameworks called “recruitment machines” and “Political Return on Investment (PROI)” to describe how and why local elected officials support …

Atrapados Y Sin Salida: Explotación Delictiva De Niñas, Niños Y Adolescentes Venezolanos Migrantes Indocumentados En Colombia, Nicolasa M. Durán Palacio, Katy L. Millán Otero Srita

The Qualitative Report

Este texto devela las prácticas de explotación delictiva de niñas, niños y adolescentes migrantes venezolanos, sin estatus legal en Colombia, por parte de grupos armados ilegales y de las bandas de crimen organizado, especialmente en las fronteras colombo-venezolanas, lugar de tránsito de la población migrante indocumentada. A través de una revisión documental con diseño cualitativo, se identifican las lógicas de victimización de la población infantil migrante sin estatus legal, los riesgos a los que se enfrentan y los obstáculos legales migratorios que les afectan negativamente y que no pueden encarar, dada su condición de indocumentados y sin amparo de su …

Pinpointing Patterns Of Violence: A Comparative Genocide Studies Approach To Violence Escalation In The Ukrainian Holodomor, Kristina Hook

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article utilizes the case study of the 1930s Ukrainian Holodomor, an artificially induced famine under Joseph Stalin, to advance comparative genocide studies debates regarding the nature, onset, and prevention of large-scale violence. Fieldwide debates question how to 1) distinguish genocide from other forms of large-scale violence and 2) trace genocides as unfolding processes, rather than crescendoing events. To circumvent unproductive definitional arguments, methodologies that track large-scale violence according to numerically-based thresholds have substituted for dynamics-based analyses. Able to address aspects of the genocide puzzle, these methodologies struggle to incorporate cross-cultural contextual variation or elicit ripe moments for specific, real-time …

Freedom Vs. Security: Analyzing The Connection Between States' Prioritization Of Security Over Civil Liberties And Citizen Support For Democratic Norms, Carlyn Trumbull Madden

Dissertations and Theses

Is global democracy declining? This is a question many have argued over, leading to multiple, oftentimes contradictory, answers regarding causes and potential solutions. This thesis seeks to explore the question of democratic decline by analyzing changes over time in public opinion survey data in three states- New Zealand, Turkey, and the United States- looking specifically at how the government has balanced the tradeoff between security and civil liberties in the post-9/11 world. I argue that long-term government prioritization of security over freedoms has eroded support for fundamental democratic norms, as citizens willingly accept restrictions to their rights in exchange for …

The Political Economy Of The Apocalypse, James K. Galbraith

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

The world faces – let us say – four great threats, and because nothing really changes, we know their names: Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death. With modest modernization these categories can serve to guide our minds on a tour of the economic policy choices of the near and distant future.

Election Campaign Finance Rules In Canadian Municipalities: An Overview, Brittany L. Bouteiller

Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance – Publications

The Money and Local Democracy Project explores the effects of campaign finance rules on municipal election campaigns and election outcomes in Canada. Governments around the world regulate election campaign financing to ensure that elections are fair and competitive, although they do so in different ways. Funded by a Western University Undergraduate Student Research Internship (UWO) grant, research assistant Brittany Bouteiller was tasked with conducting preliminary research on 65 municipalities across Canada to determine the availability of campaign finance data from local and provincial governments and to identify clusters or trends. This research bulletin summarizes her findings.

Lost In Time And Lost In Space: Chronotopes In Thomas Pynchon’S Against The Day, Stephen Margavio

Poster Presentations

Honors thesis poster presentation.

In his 1937 essay “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel,” Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin coins the term “chronotope” to discuss the inherently interconnected nature of time and space in narrative constructions. According to Bakhtin, there are a number of specific chronotopes (or space/time configurations) that help to define literary genres. Applying Bakhtin’s concepts to Thomas Pynchon’s novel Against the Day (2006), this thesis examines how the idea of narrative space/time can clarify Pynchon’s use of genre to make socio-political commentary. The first chapter of this thesis focuses on Bakhtin’s “road chronotope,” …

Lost In Time And Lost In Space: Chronotopes In Thomas Pynchon’S Against The Day, Stephen Margavio

Honors Theses

In his 1937 essay “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel,” Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin coins the term “chronotope” to discuss the inherently interconnected nature of time and space in narrative constructions. According to Bakhtin, there are a number of specific chronotopes (or space/time configurations) that help to define literary genres. Applying Bakhtin’s concepts to Thomas Pynchon’s novel Against the Day (2006), this thesis examines how the idea of narrative space/time can clarify Pynchon’s use of genre to make socio-political commentary. The first chapter of this thesis focuses on Bakhtin’s “road chronotope,” which is characterized by …

America And The World Health Organization: Through Covid-19 And Beyond, David M. Goad

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

As the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, in today’s interconnected, globalized world, the state of global health has profound implications for the national security and economic interests of the United States (U.S.) and thus the overall well-being of American citizens. Almost a year after COVID-19 first surfaced in Wuhan, China, the international community continues to reel from the myriad medical, economic, and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the U.S., the pandemic has brought the country’s relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO) into serious question, concerning both America’s financial support of the WHO and its membership in the Organization. …

Assessing Risk At The National Strategic Level: Visualization Tools For Military Planners, Wade A. Germann, Heather S. Gregg

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

The reemergence of great power competition, conflict with near-peer competitor states below the level of armed conflict, and persisting threats from nonstate actors with transnational ambitions and global reach pose challenges for strategists planning, executing, and assessing military operations and strategy. Building on current visualization tools, two proposed models—the National Strategic Risk Abacus and the National Strategic Risk Radar Chart—address these challenges and better depict how the US military may inadvertently contribute to risk at the national strategic level.

The Desire Of Dependence On Men And The Justification Of Sexism: An Exploratory Study Of Saudi Females, Amal Althobaiti

Effat Undergraduate Research Journal

This research explores the prevalence of the desire of dependence on men among Saudi women in Jeddah and its relationship to the justification of sexism. A number of Saudi women living in Jeddah (N=179) responded to the Desire of Dependence on Men Scale, which was developed for this study. To measure the degree of justification of sexism, the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1996) was also distributed to respondents online. Showing a desire of dependency on men among Saudi women was expected, in addition to finding a significant relationship between the two suggested variables. In this study, respondents showed …

Corruption, Campaigning, And Novelty: The 2020 Parliamentary Elections And The Evolving Patterns Of Party Politics In Slovakia, Tim Haughton, Marek Rybář, Kevin Deegan-Krause

Honors Scholarly Publications

Party politics across Central and Eastern Europe has become less structured. Many of the divides that anchored political competition have waned in recent years, weakening the attachment of voters to the existing palette of parties and making them more likely to be attracted to new and non-traditional electoral vehicles. But for such parties to succeed at the ballot box, they need to be able to frame elections and campaign effectively. Drawing on data from a specially commissioned survey, we find that the success of Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) led by Igor Matovič in the 2020 parliamentary elections in …

The People Of The Pla 2.0, Roy Kamphausen Mr.

Books, Monographs & Collaborative Studies

The 27th annual People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Conference—“The People in the PLA” 2.0—revisited a theme first explored at the 2006 conference but understudied since. This volume examines how the structure, education, training, and recruitment of PLA personnel have changed in the last decade and in the Xi Jinping era.

Structural changes in the PLA have centered around two poles: improving the warfighting readiness of the PLA and strengthening Communist Party of China (CPC) control of the PLA. Reforms to the political work system, the evolution of the Second Artillery into the Rocket Force, and expansion of the PLA’s foreign-based force …

Citizens’ Democratic Attitudes: Winning The Constituency Offsets The Negative Effect Of Electoral Defeat At The National Level, Hannah Ridge

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

Hannah Ridge examines the effect of constituency election victories and defeats on citizens’ democratic opinions in three majoritarian democracies: Australia, Canada, and Great Britain. She finds that winning in the constituency offsets the negative effect of electoral defeat at the national level; among national winners, however, the district result has limited impact on democratic attitudes. Constituency-level victories are less effective at mitigating the effect of national defeat on more diffuse democracy support.

A Network Of Thrones: Kinship And Conflict In Europe, 1495–1918, Seth G. Benzell, Kevin Cooke

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We construct a database linking European royal kinship networks, monarchies, and wars to study the effect of family ties on conflict. To establish causality, we exploit decreases in connection caused by apolitical deaths of rulers' mutual relatives. These deaths are associated with substantial increases in the frequency and duration of war. We provide evidence that these deaths affect conflict only through changing the kinship network. Over our period of interest, the percentage of European monarchs with kinship ties increased threefold. Together, these findings help explain the well-documented decrease in European war frequency.