Political Science Commons^™

Political And Civic Engagement Attitudes Among Asian American College Students, Matthew Vanada

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study explored the attitudes of political and civic engagement among Asian American college students. Previous research suggests that young people are increasingly more inclined to participate in civic activities over traditional forms of political participation. The researcher considered this trend by examining the views of Asian American students, a group whose political behavior has not been largely investigated.

This study employed a qualitative research design. Students from public institutions of higher education in Las Vegas were interviewed using an in-depth and semi-structured format. Findings suggest that there is a general willingness to become involved in civic activity such as …

November Roundtable: Multiculturalism And Integration Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Germany's Integration Blinkers. What's So Bad About Parallel Societies?” by Henryk M. Broder, Spiegel Online, November 20, 2010

and

“Angela Merkel: German Multiculturalism has Utterly Failed,” by Matthew Weaver, The Guardian, October 17, 2010

¿Amigos, Enemigos O Hermanos En Riña?: Cooperación Y Conflicto Entre El Gobierno De Morales Y La Confederación De Los Pueblos Indígenas, Antti Aki Eemeli Isoaho

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Este trabajo investiga la relación entre la Confederación de los Pueblos Indígenas del Oriente, Chaco y Amazonía Boliviana (CIDOB) y el actual gobierno, es decir, identifica conflictos, así como áreas de cooperación recientes entre los dos. A través de la realización de ardua investigación literaria, distintas entrevistas y participación directa en la Gran Asamblea Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas (GANPI 2010), esta investigación propone responder de manera detallada la siguiente pregunta: ¿Cómo es y cómo ha evolucionado la relación entre el actual gobierno boliviano (liderado por un indígena) y los pueblos originarios del Oriente? Este estudio revela que a pesar …

Immature Citizens And The State, Vivian E. Hamilton

Faculty Publications

Citizens are born, but they are also made. How its citizens come to be—whether the educations they receive will expand or constrain their future options, whether the values they assimilate will encourage or dissuade their civic engagement, etc.—fundamentally concerns the state. Through the power it wields over a vast range of policymaking contexts, the state can significantly influence (or designate those who will influence) many of the formative experiences of young citizens. Young citizens’ accumulated experiences in turn can significantly influence the future mature citizens they will become. The state insufficiently considers the cumulative nature of its citizens’ development, however. …

Preservation Ethics In The Case Of Nebraska's Nationally Registered Historic Properties, Darren Michael Adams

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation focuses on the National Register of Historic Places and considers the geographical implications of valuing particular historic sites over others. Certain historical sites will either gain or lose desirability from one era to the next, this dissertation identifies and explains three unique preservation ethical eras, and it maps the sites which were selected during those eras. These eras are the Settlement Era (1966–1975), the Commercial Architecture Era (1976–1991), and the Progressive Planning Era (1992–2010). The findings show that transformations in the program included an early phase when state authorities listed historical resources pertaining to the settlement of the …

Through The Looking Glass: Finding And Freeing Modern-Day Slaves At The State Level, Michelle L. Rickert

Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article delves into the interaction between federal and state laws prohibiting human trafficking. The article advocates for comprehensive human trafficking laws at the state level, including police training, victim aftercare, forfeiture, and prosecution as essential elements. It looks comprehensively at the existing state laws prohibiting human trafficking. Additionally it examines the five existing models for state law and suggests benefits and potential improvements for each model. The article concludes y advocating a holistic law prohibiting human trafficking in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

"American Dream" Or Global Nightmare?, Melanie E. L. Bush

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

In the United States we are witnessing a period of heightened contestation about the parameters of nationalism, patriotism, and loyalty. The oft-heard phrase "Support the Troops" now signifies the desire both to send more soldiers to war and to bring home those already in combat. This "nation of immigrants" has spawned a new generation of "minute-men" to defend national borders while mainstream discourse touts the benefits of "diversity." Dreams of upward mobility present for some during the mid-20th century seem now hazy at best as the proportional income of those at top grows while the rest of the population increasingly …

"Globalization As The Ultimate Evil": Reading Turkey's Extreme Right And Extreme Left Political Parties' Views Of Globalization, H. Bahadir Turk

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Turkey has been witnessing multi-dimensional debates concerning the question of globalization. What is particularly striking is that Turkey's extreme right and extreme left wing parties, which are literally enemies of each other, have been meeting at the same anti-globalist point by using the same rhetoric. In this study, the central argument is that Turkey's new political context has given rise to this anomaly. Analyzing why these parties detest the globalization process, this article focuses on the dynamics of Turkey's political context through globalization debates and discusses the dimensions of the alliance between these anti-globalist political parties.

From The Alliance Of Economies To The Alliance Of Civilizations: Turkey's Strategic Role And Importance, Murat Doral

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

In "The Clash of Civilizations;' Huntington hypothesized that the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between groups of different civilizations, and concluded that the "clash of civilizations" will dominate global politics in the future. In addition, Huntington declared Turkey as one of the "torn countries" and tried to make connections between its Muslim identity and its delayed ED membership. The growing trade and investments volume tell us that regardless of our differences, people around the world understand the benefits of economic cooperation and would prefer this route to starting a war of civilizations.

A Rock Strikes Back: Women's Struggles For Equality In The Development Of The South African Constitution, Thuto Seabe Thipe

Political Science Honors Projects

In 1991, South African women’s organisations formed the Women's National Coalition (WNC) to identify and advocate for women's primary needs in the post-apartheid Constitution. The outcome of this advocacy was South Africa’s adoption, in 1996, of one of the most comprehensive protections of gender and sexuality rights of any national constitution. I argue that the WNC became a key actor in the development of the Constitution by drawing from a tradition of women’s organising in South Africa that emphasised women’s legitimacy in and value to public politics. The WNC rejected masculinist framings of politics and instead demanded that political structures …

Raising Youth Turnout: The Role Of Campaigns And Political Involvement Organizations, Rebecca Brown

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

This paper will explore a different side of the youth voter and the mystified year of the youth voter by examining the elections of 1992, 2004, and 2008. In investigating this issue, instead of examining the actions of the young voters during these elections, the actions of campaigns and get out the vote organizations are examined. It seems that the disappointment in young voters is not an issue for which young people hold sole responsibility. The other actors in the election, too, must do their part in courting the young voter. They must spend the time, effort, and money necessary …

Welfare Benefits After The 1996 Reform Act: A New Look At The Idea Of States As Welfare Magnets, Erin Sollund

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The focus of this research is to find the differences of how each state’s welfare policies have changed since the welfare reform act of 1996, and also how recipients have responded to this change. In my analysis I combined data from the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the U.S. Department of Commerce. Preliminary results suggest that states with a higher percentage of recipients on welfare before the reform showed a greater change in number of recipients than states starting with a lower percentage as did states with stronger Democratic leanings, a more …

Interview With Helen Shiller, Jacob Martin Lingan

Chicago Anti-Apartheid Movement

Length: 50 minutes

Oral history interview of Helen Shiller by Jacob Martin Lingan

Ms. Shiller first outlines the path that led her to forming the Anti-Apartheid Ordinance, beginning with her work with the Minister of Information for ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) and a trip to Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and South Africa, which led to her interest in the latter. She recalls how, when she returned to Chicago, she was motivated to strengthen legislation against the Apartheid government. She describes the process they went through to force Chicago banks to divest from South Africa, which happened to coincide with Nelson Mandela’s …

European Integration, Identity, And National Self Interest: The Enduring Nature Of National Identity, Tyler R. White

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

In the 1950s as European integration begun a group of scholars called the neofunctionalists suggested that as political and economic institutions were created, technical spillovers from integration would result in a new ‘European identity.’ More than 50 years later, Euroenthusiasts have touted the European Union (EU) as being the institution that will bring Europe together and create a unified ‘European identity.’ While many elites and technocrats feel a closer association to ‘Europe’ there is little evidence that identities are changing as a result of European integration. This dissertation analyzes historical, academic, and journalistic accounts to look for evidence that European …

Learning Sustainable Development: Chimeneas De La Esperanza, Miriam V. Mollan Gundersen

Social Sciences

Social inequality and environmental degradation are motivating informed young people into action and connecting impoverished regions of the world with students in more developed nations. This Social Sciences senior project is to analyze an alternative development model designed by a group of Californian university students. The project, named Chimeneas de la Esperanza, is designed to help impoverished Nicaraguan women start a ceramics business. The major hurdle of this mission is to establish a market for the ceramics product. Energy efficient ceramic stoves and smoke ventilating chimneys would benefit the community and avoid an impacted crafts market. The project encompasses ideas …

Civil Society Sector And Political Change: An Interview With Catherine Lim, Lien Centre For Social Innovation

Social Space

Singapore is a society undergoing transitions. With a burgeoning migrant community, the advent of integrated resorts with casinos and an arguably increasingly effervescent non-profit, civil society sector, Singapore looks to be a society that is rapidly opening up. Yet, as writer and political commentator Catherine Lim controversially proposes, civil society and non-profit activists cannot create change without getting their voices heard and actively participating in the political process. She shares with Social Space, her thoughts on the indispensable ingredients for openness and political engagement in a society that wants to be truly global.

Therapeutic Discourse And The American Public Philosophy: On American Liberalism's Troubled Relationship With Psychology, Clifford D. Vickrey

Honors Theses

I explore the main currents of postwar American liberalism. One, sociological, emerged in response to the danger of mass movements. Articulated primarily by political sociologists and psychologists and ascendant from the mid-fifties till the mid-seventies, it heralded the "end of ideology." It emphasized stability, elitism, positive science and pluralism; it recast normatively sound politics as logrolling and hard bargaining. I argue that these normative features, attractive when considered in isolation, taken together led to a vicious ad hominem style in accounting for views outside the postwar consensus. It used pseudo-scientific literature in labeling populists, Progressives, Taft conservatives, Goldwaterites, the New …

The Emerging Civil Society In China And Its Impact On Democratization, Haolu Wang

Honors Theses

Recent years have seen an emerging civil society in an authoritarian China. The authoritarian embrace of civil society challenges the conventional wisdom that civil society is closely linked to democracy. In Beijing, the rhetoric of civil society linked less to democracy than to modernization. However, does civil society development have any impact on democratization in authoritarian regimes? The thesis tries to provide a tentative answer by studying civil society and democratization in post-Mao China. As a result of economic development and political reforms, gradual political liberalization has marked a shift of state-society relations that gives rise to a certain degree …

Obedience, Schooling, And Political Participation, Davin Chor, Filipe R. Campante

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the joint evolution of cultural norms and human capital investment, and how these affect patterns of political participation. We first present some empirical evidence that cultural attitudes towards obedience systematically influence an individual's propensity to engage in different political activities: obedience discourages more confrontational modes of political activity (such as public demonstrations), while raising participation in non-confrontational civic acts (such as voting). These cultural attitudes further appear to be determined in part by cultural transmission across generations. Motivated by this evidence, we develop a dynamic model in which human capital and obedience are …

Violence In The House, Katherine Hite

Human Rights & Human Welfare

There was something particularly haunting in reading this Kristof and WuDunn piece during the week’s major US headlines: a girl in California had been imprisoned for eighteen years in the home of a man who kidnapped and raped her, fathered her children, and employed her in his small enterprise—a business card design and printing agency. Business clients interviewed for the story appeared completely taken aback. Clients had always found the now twenty-nine-year-old Jaycee Dugard “professional, polite, and responsive” as well as “creative and talented in her work.” Others expressed similar shock, recounting that Ms. Dugard “was always smiling.” Ms. Dugard’s …

Aboriginal Affairs: Monologue Or Dialogue?, Vanessa Castejon

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

On January 26 2002, the thirtieth anniversary of the creation of the first Aboriginal tent embassy was celebrated. In 1972 the tent embassy emerged from the Black Power movement as a manifestation of the call for recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty and the right to self-determination. These claims have been raised continually by some prominent Aboriginal activists, but the main answer given by the government has been the creation of Aboriginal policies and sections for Aboriginal people within the Australian political system. The government, by different means, has brought Aboriginal activists within the system and has diverted attention from their aspirations. …

Gay Parenthood And The Revolution Of The Modern Family: An Examination Of The Unique Barriers Confronting Gay Adoptive Parents, Nicholas Arntsen

Honors Scholar Theses

Abstract: In recent decades, the structure of the American family has been revolutionized to incorporate families of diverse and unconventional compositions. Gay and lesbian couples have undoubtedly played a crucial role in this revolution by establishing families through the tool of adoption. Eleven adoptive parents from the state of Connecticut were interviewed to better conceptualize the unique barriers gay couples encounter in the process adoption. Both the scholarly research and the interview data illustrate that although gay couples face enormous legal barriers, the majority of their hardship comes through social interactions. As a result, the cultural myths and legal restrictions …

A Place Like This: An Environmental Justice History Of The Owens Valley - Water In Indigenous, Colonial, And Manzanar Stories, Monica Embrey

Pomona Senior Theses

This text provides an environmental justice analysis of the stories of the people who lived in the Owens Valley, who watered its land and cultivated its crops—pine trees, apple trees, and kabocha alike. Telling the personal stories of challenge and resistance that manifested alongside the oppressive forces of military and state domination provides the opportunity to align forcibly relocated, exploited and incarcerated people’s struggles throughout time. This text starts with The Nü’ma Peoples who were the first humans to live in the Owens Valley and continues with the struggle for empire between rival colonial empires of agriculture and distant urban …

Children's Health Insurance Program: The Dynamics Of Federalism And Health Care Policy, Erik White

Political Science Theses and Capstones

On February 4^th, 2009, President Obama signed into law the reauthorization of the Children Health Insurance Program. The federal government will now spend 30 billion dollars towards the goal of ensuring that more children in the United States are insured. I investigate this particular health care policy and look at the different dynamics that affect the ultimate goal of universal health insurance for children. Because this program allows for state flexibility under broad federal guidelines, one is able to look at individual states, and their particular actions and characteristics, to determine the best approach to insuring the most …

Educational Vouchers And Academic Performance, Nicole Kvidera

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Every time our elected representatives are looking at budget, or election time rolls around, or a family is considering moving, the topic of education is in the thoughts and on the minds of many. Over the years there have been many different education reforms and proposed ideas. This presentation will go in-depth into one such educational reform idea. Educational vouchers have been studied in various ways over the years; the data for this study comes from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and gathered over the course of years. The data gathered allows one to compare students in Milwaukee Public Schools and students that …

Latin American Migrants In The Las Vegas Valley: Civic Engagement And Political Participation, John P. Tuman

Institute for Latin American Studies

Funded by a grant from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (with support from the MacArthur Foundation), this project is part of a broader national study that examines Latin America migrants in selected cities in the United States. The goal of the project is to explore patterns of civic engagement and political participation among Latin American migrants and Latinos in the Las Vegas, Nevada, metropolitan area. A secondary, but not less important, goal is to understand the factors that contribute to or inhibit the ability of individuals from Latin America to acquire U.S. citizenship. The issues addressed by this …

Competing Social Movements And Local Political Culture : Voting On Ballot Propositions To Ban Same-Sex Marriage., Arnold Fleischmann, Laura Moyer

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Objective: This paper uses social movement theory to explain variation in local support for proposed constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage in 22 states during 2004 and 2006.

Methods: The analysis uses OLS regression with county-level data to explain variation in local support for the amendments.

Results: Support for the amendments in both years was positively related to the proportion of a county that was evangelical or Republican, but negatively related to its level of education and proportion of Catholics. Amendment support was positively related in only one year to the percentage of a county’s population that …

Political Islam In Jordan And Morocco: Changing Tides?, Andrew Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to assess if the 2007 electoral failures of the Islamic Action Front (IAF) in Jordan, and the Justice and Development Party (PJD) in Morocco, represent a weakening of power, or merely a minor diversion in the quest of Islamists to attain greater political voice in both countries.

Beyond Corporatism And Liberalism: State And Civil Society In Cooperation In Nicaragua, Hannah Pallmeyer

Hispanic Studies Honors Projects

The Nicaraguan state has historically attempted to control Nicaraguan civil society using corporatist and liberal-democratic frameworks. This has created a difficult organizing environment for civil society organizations to struggle for social change. In this thesis, I argue that civil society organizations, operating in 2008 in a corporatist or liberal framework, were less effective in achieving national social change than organizations that worked cooperatively with the state, yet maintained some autonomy. This hypothesis is developed using the case study of three water rights organizations, and is further tested using the case of corporatist-structured Citizen Power Councils, created in 2007.

Democratic Institutions Create Civic Health: How Local Jurisdictions Can Enhance Their Problem-Solving Capacities Through Inclusive Governance, Including A Case Study Of Newark, Delaware, Ezra Temko

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Civic health is a community’s economic, civic, and social infrastructure – its capacity to solve its problems. This paper explores how contemporary local governments address the opportunities and challenges facing their communities and how local governments could utilize civic engagement to enhance civic health. It also evaluates the status of Newark, Delaware’s civic health and offers pragmatic steps Newark’s government can take to enhance the community’s civic health. Democratic governance is the 21st century engine for communities like Newark, Delaware to enhance their civic health. Collaborative and inclusive governance can improve a community’s abilities to solve problems. The Newark community …