Political Science Commons^™

Political Identification: How Parental Values Are Influenced, Nina I. Rubenstein

Student Publications

Politics is an ever-growing part of American culture and, as a result, party identification has become an integral part of many Americans’ identity. Party affiliation largely impacts the values of different individuals. Using the 2012 National Election Survey, I evaluate the influence of party identification on what is seen as more valuable traits in children. Specifically, I focus on the preference of obedience over self-reliance and independence over respect. I find that in a comparison of individuals, when controlled for race, the opinions across non-white respondents of different political identifications are indistinguishable. Additionally, I find that among white respondents, those …

Challenges Remain In Conducting Adequate Congressional Oversight, Alexander Crouch

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

A Roundtable For Victoria M. Grieve, Little Cold Warriors: American Childhood In The 1950s, Thomas Field Jr., Julia L. Mickenberg, Lori Clune, Mary Brennan, Donna Alvah, Victoria M. Grieve

Publications

Dr. Thomas Field introduces a roundtable discussion of Victoria M. Grieve's Little Cold Warriors: American Childhood in the 1950s, providing a synopsis of reviewer critiques before the reviewers expand on their views and the author responds.

Syrian Refugee Camps In Jordan: An Assessment, Athena-Rose Jennings

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Syrian Refugee Camps in Jordan: An Assessment explores how and why the Government of Jordan created camps to house its 670,000 Syrian refugees. Examining Jordan’s four Syrian refugee camps, Jennings considers to what extent their different operating models are effective and why. Metrics of camp effectiveness include degree and type of support from non-Government of Jordan humanitarian actors, the availability of education and medical care in the camps, and the degree to which camp residents themselves engage in the camp communities. She posits that using the camp model affords Jordan greater internal security, and influence over refugee matters internationally by …

Suicide And Neoliberalism: An Imminent Critique Of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Noël Ingram

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

In her paper, “Suicide and Neoliberalism: An Imminent Critique of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy,” Noël Ingram, following the tradition of scholars such as Philip Cushman and Mark E. Button, challenges the dominant discursive framework of suicide through an examination of one of the dominant psychological therapeutic frameworks used to understand and treat suicidal ideation, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Ingram argues that CBT assumes the site of disorder is situated in the atomized neoliberal subject whose failure to think and behave rationally has led to their suicide attempt. Further, Ingram discusses how the framework of CBT is influenced by inherent neoliberal assumptions with its …

Aristotle's Quarrel With Socrates: Friendship In Political Thought, John Boersma

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Friendship played an outsized role in ancient political thought in comparison to medieval and modern political philosophies. Most modern scholarship has paid relatively little attention to the role of friendship in ancient political philosophy. Recently, however, scholars are increasingly beginning to investigate classical conceptions of friendship. My dissertation joins this growing interest by examining the importance of friendship in the political thought of Socrates and Aristotle. Specifically, I analyze the divergent approaches that Socrates and Aristotle take to politics and trace these distinct approaches to their differing conceptions of friendship. Through an examination of two Platonic dialogues—the Lysis and the …

A State Of Impermanence: Buddhism, Liberalism, And The Problem Of Politics, Cory Michael Sukala

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the relationship of Buddhist political thought and liberal political thought at the level of first principles. I will examine the tension created by the Buddhist view of political life as instrumental and secondary to man's being as a function of the transition of the Buddhist world into the sphere of Western political life, which views the role of politics as primary to man's nature. In Part I, this will be accomplished through a consideration of the origins of political life and the foundation of the political state in each tradition as viewed through the themes of human …

Searching: On The Cultural And Sociopolitical Implication Of Social Media, Siamak Javadi

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

This is a review of the film Searching (2018), a multilayered thriller co-written and directed by Aneesh Chaganty. This film is a cinematic reflection of the profound impact of social media networks on our lives. The movies continuously navigates between the pros and cons of social media platforms. In this review, I focus on cultural and sociopolitical implications of social media platforms in relation to the film.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum: Prospects For An Ethical Theory Of Accountability, Melvin Dubnick

Faculty Publications

This paper is intended to restate the case for the development of an "ethical theory of accountability" as an alternative to current theoretical frames being applied by students of accountable governance. I would emphasize the word "alternative" at this juncture, noting that an ethical theory should not be regarded as replacement for current models; rather it is offered as a reframing of accountability that can provide a significantly different perspective -- one rooted in (and built upon) ontologically distinct presuppositions about the nature of account-giving/receiving.

Central to the effort is establishing accountability as the capacity to engage in account-giving/receiving behavior …

Space And Identity: Mexican-American Dance Halls In The Quad Cities, Crystal Salazar

Eddie Mabry Diversity Award

No abstract provided.

H-Diplo Article Review 831- Field Jr. On D’Haeseleer. “American Civic Action: The National Campaign Plan And The Failure To Win ‘Hearts And Minds’ In El Salvador.”, Thomas Field

Publications

The author - Dr. Thomas Field - reviews Brian D’Haeseleer's article “American Civic Action: The National Campaign Plan and the Failure to Win ‘Hearts and Minds’ in El Salvador.” This article appeared in Diplomacy and Statecraft, issue 26:3 (2015), on pages 494-513. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2015.1067527.

Using Cognitive Mapping To Longitudinally Examine Political Brand Associations, Ewan Macdonald, Roger Sherlock, John Hogan

Articles

This paper uses cognitive mapping techniques to understand how brand associations, an important aspect of political brand equity are formed, differ, and change, from the perspective of citizens, across the four largest Irish political parties between 2013 and 2016. The paper focuses in particular upon the strength, favourability and uniqueness of these brand associations. The results constitute a first attempt to longitudinally explore changing political brand associations through cognitive mapping techniques, using data generated with the participation of hundreds of citizens. Our findings suggest that this approach can contribute to our understanding of how and why political brand associations change …

Ungodly Freedom: How Philosophers Rise And Empires Fall In The Work Of Leo Strauss, Eli Karetny

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that to fully understand the work of Leo Strauss, scholars must look beyond the Platonic and Machiavellian elements in Strauss and explore how Nietzsche’s ideas about nihilism, the will to power, the eternal return, and the ubermensch influence Strauss’s critique of modernity, his understanding of the relationship between philosophy and politics, and his redefinition of the philosopher as a prophetic lawgiver. This study examines the Nietzschean origins of Strauss’s hierarchical theory of freedom, which vests reimagined philosophers with the authority to create truth and meaning. I argue that Strauss’s concept of philosophy and corresponding pedagogy cultivates new …

Examining Pancasila’S Position In The Public Reason Scheme: A Critical Analysis, Muhamad Iswardani Chaniago

Jurnal Politik

This research tries to review a number of ideas of some Indonesian scholars such as Yudi Latif, Franz Magnis-Suseno, and Syamsul Ma’arif, who saw and described the relationship between Pancasila and public reason, one of the popular political concepts in political studies. Some Indonesian scholars have linked Pancasila to public reason, with a secular nuance, so that it could potentially be free of religious associations. The troubled derivatives of public reason include (1) the negation of the principle of majoritarianism, (2) the neutral state principle, and (3) substantial elements in religion, such as the principle of universalism. With a qualitative …

The Myth Of Civil Society’S Democratic Role: Volunteerism And Indonesian Democracy, Hurriyah Hurriyah

Jurnal Politik

Is a flourishing civil society’s political activism positively correlated with the deepening of Indonesian democracy? This article addresses this question by examining the role of civil society in the 2014 presidential election in Indonesia, focusing on the collective actions of volunteer groups (known as Gerakan Relawan) that shaped both the election process and its result. While some studies on civil society activism in the 2014 presidential election suggested the connection between the role of volunteer movement and the democratic process in Indonesia, this paper suggests that the overpraised assumptions regarding the connection between civil society’s role and democratic consolidation, in …

Ideology And Pragmatism: Discourse Factors In Infrastructure Development In Indonesia’S Jokowi-Jk Era, Fredick Boven Ekayanta

Jurnal Politik

The discussion about development discourse in a country talking about how an idea affect economic policies. In Indonesia, the development discourse continues to change depending on the ruling regime. After the reformation, the dominant discourse is a neoliberal one that minimizes the role of the state in development. During the reign of Jokowi-JK, however, the role of the state strengthened. The government plans to build a massive infrastructure of the physical economy. The government legitimized its choice of action as the implementation of the Pancasila and Trisakti ideologies. Using the theories of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, this article argues …

A Needs-Based Partial Theory Of Human Injustice: Oppression, Dehumanization, Exploitation, And Systematic Inequality In Opportunities To Address Human Needs, Michael A. Dover

Social Work Faculty Publications

The article presents an original needs-based partial theory of human injustice and shows its relationship to existing theories of human need and human liberation. The theory is based on an original typology of three social structural sources of human injustice, a partial theorization of the mechanisms of human injustice, and a needs-based theorization of the nature of human injustice, as experienced by individuals. The article makes a sociological contribution to normative social theory by clarifying the relationship of human injustice to human needs, human rights, and human liberation. The theory contends that human injustice is produced when oppression, mechanistic dehumanization, …

The Critical Juncture Concept’S Evolving Capacity To Explain Policy Change, John Hogan

Articles

This article examines the evolution of our understanding of the critical junctures concept. The concept finds its origins in historical intuitionalism, being employed in the context of path dependence to account for sudden and jarring institutional or policy changes. We argue that the concept and the literature surrounding it—now incorporating ideas, discourse, and agency—have gradually become more comprehensive and nuanced as historical institutionalism was followed by ideational historical institutionalism and constructivist and discursive institutionalism. The prime position of contingency has been supplanted by the role of ideas and agency in explaining critical junctures and other instances of less than transformative …

Slogans Appropriate To The Legacy Of Martin Luther King Jr., Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

For printing signs, banners, posters, tee shirts, and bumper stickers (and for preaching sermons) that are appropriate to the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., please consider the following slogans: ABOLISH WAR, ABOLISH POVERTY, AMEND THE CONSTITUTION, SUPPORT AN ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS, JOBS FOR ALL, GUARANTEED INCOME FOR ALL, SUPPORT UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME, and GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR - Luke 4:14-19.

A Dilemma For Saulish Skepticism: Either Self-Defeating Or Not Even Skepticism, Samuel Director

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Jennifer Saul argues that the evidence from the literature on implicit biases entails a form of skepticism. In this paper, I argue that Saul faces a dilemma: her argument is either self-defeating, or it does not yield a skeptical conclusion. For Saul, both results are unacceptable; thus, her argument fails.

Our Separate Struggles Are Really One: Building Political Race Coalitions For Educational Justice, Phillip Smith, Sonya Douglass Horsford, Enrique A. Alemán Jr.

GSE Faculty Publications

In this article, we explore political race theory as a framework for building coalitions between Black and Brown communities as part of a shared struggle for educational justice and community power amid neoliberal reform. Inspired by the Black and Brown alliances for economic justice of the 1960s and 1970s and informed by previous scholarship on the conceptualization of political race and the lived experience of being raced in America and its relationship to power, we draw from the experiential knowledge of African American and Mexican American superintendents to better understand how they interpreted and navigated the politics of race as …

A New Measure Of The Authoritarian Personality: Untangling The Personal And The Political, Melodie Spiegel

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Despite the existence of multiple scales designed to measure authoritarianism as a personality trait, current research disagrees as to whether current measures reliably measure all three dimensions of authoritarianism: submission, aggression, and traditionalism. This study focused on the development of a new scale in response to methodological and validity concerns of previously-used measures. This new scale was found to be a reliable measure of authoritarian belief in two subsequent studies of college-aged adults. Factor analysis of responses to the items of the new measure also provided evidence of the multidimensionality of authoritarianism as a construct. Further, significant correlations were found …

Times Taxes And Voting Queues: The Voting Rights Act After Shelby County, Alabama V. Holder (2013), Donald Davison, Michael Krassa

Faculty Publications

The United States Supreme Court effectively dismantled the pre-clearance provision of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County, AL v. Holder (2013). The majority asserts that “times have changed” and the relevant provisions of the VRA are now obsolete. This paper examines whether dismantling preclearance adversely affects how long racial and ethnic voters must wait to vote. The results show that the VRA reduces the time minority voters waited in line by one-half in the covered jurisdictions. After preclearance is dismantled, however, that benefit vanishes. Further, minority voters in covered jurisdictions continue to wait longer to vote compared to white …

The Use Of State-Sponsored Torture For National Security: A Debate On The Permissibility Of Torture In The Name Of Public Safety, Matthew Fisher

Honors Program Theses

Can the United States government’s use of state-sponsored torture ever be justified for national security purposes? This question is a taboo subject that frequently elicits passionate responses from individuals who argue both for and against its use in upholding national security. This vigorous debate challenges moral, ethical, legal, and even pragmatic ideals in seeking to determine if state use of torture can ever be a part of America’s national security strategy. These considerations, and others, have inspired this research project and the specific research question which seeks to determine whether the United States government’s use of state-sponsored torture for national …

Effect Of Religious Legislation On Religious Behavior: The Ramadan Fast, Hannah M. Ridge

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

State laws compelling citizens to comply with elements of religious law – also known as religious legislation – are globally pervasive. Previous research has well documented the incidence of myriad examples of religious legislation. These laws’ practical effect on citizens’ behavior, however, has been less examined. This article looks at the effect of one piece of religious legislation: state laws enforcing the Ramadan fast. It demonstrates that the use of state power to sanction violations of religious law significantly increases citizens’ compliance with this religious law.

La Modernité Tunisienne Dévoilée : Une Étude Autour De La Femme Célibataire, Madison Wagner

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explains recent accounts of discrimination and cutbacks in reproductive health spaces in Tunisia. Complicating dominant analyses, which attribute these events to the post-revolution political atmosphere which has allowed the proliferation of islamic extremism, I interpret these instances as a manifestation of a deeply rooted stigma against sexually active single women. I trace this stigma’s inception to the contradictory way that Habib Bourguiba conceptualized modernity after independence, and the responsibility he assigned to Tunisian women to embody that modernity. This responsibility remains salient today, and is putting Tunisian women in an increasingly untenable and vulnerable position.

After independence, Bourguiba …

(Un)Safe Zones: Good Intentions, Bad Logic, Emma Henson

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis aims to explore the disconnect between calls for safe zones as a tool of humanitarian intervention, and the dark history of safe zone failure. This thesis begins with a brief discussion of current calls for safe zones in Syria, and how a proper theoretical framework and historical understanding are needed to discuss whether or not safe zones can be successfully implemented in Syria. The following literature review discusses not only prominent academic arguments and the history of humanitarian intervention, but it suggests a framework for deconstructing case studies. This framework looks first at the interests of an intervening …

Catching Congress Up: Restoring The Office Of Technology Assessment, Bruno Youn

CMC Senior Theses

Congress has become infamous for its lack of understanding of technology, particularly with the Facebook and Google hearings in 2018. To improve this understanding, this thesis argues for the return of the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a congressional support agency created in 1972 that provided science and technology expertise to Congress until its termination in 1995. It also considers potential changes that might be made to the old OTA model and the political environment in which a new OTA would need to survive.

Evolving Conceptions Of Sovereignty As Applied To Membership In International Organizations, Luke C. Radice

CMC Senior Theses

In the current international climate, both nations and individuals increasingly question both the validity and necessity of international organizations. This paper seeks to answer some of those questions, and to determine why countries choose to surrender significant portions of the national power that they are afforded under traditional perceptions of “Westphalian sovereignty”. This question is answered through an analysis of historical political thought on the concept of Sovereignty, then is applied to two case studies: the United Nations and the European Union, in which the benefits and downsides of surrendering sovereignty are discussed. Ultimately, this thesis concludes that the concept …

Fdr And Economic Rights In The American Tradition, Charles Harris

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the idea of economic rights and their place in American political history. The American constitutional understanding of rights has historically not included positive economic rights and has focused on negative political liberties. Chapter One is a discussion of what economic rights are in a broad sense. Then in Chapter Two I focus on Roosevelt. In his 1944 State of the Union Address, he proposed a “Second Bill of Rights” for America that was a list of economic rights. I use that speech and some of FDR’s other writings to understand economic rights as they were seen at …