Political Science Commons^™

Mexican Cartel Tactical Note #20: Rpg-29 Anti-Armor Munitions, David A. Kuhn, Anikh Wadhawan, Robert J. Bunker

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Note—Up until recently, weapons that provide for armor and bunker defeat capability at the levels that the RPG-29 is capable of, have not been seen in the hands of the Mexican cartels. The fact that they have successfully obtained them—and the origin and mechanism by which they were obtained should be of extreme concern to everyone.

Vbieds In The Mexican Criminal Insurgency, Robert J. Bunker, John P. Sullivan

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

At least 130,000 people have been killed in the ongoing Mexican “crime war,” and many more have been kidnapped or simply gone missing. Yet despite the significance of these numbers, official reports and news accounts frequently underreport the toll of this war.

Film Review: Narco Cultura – A Tale Of Three Cities, John P. Sullivan, Khirin A. Bunker, Robert J. Bunker

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

This is a film review.

Narco Armor: Improvised Armored Fighting Vehicles In Mexico, Robert J. Bunker, Byron Ramirez

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

The introduction of this work analyzes the types and evolution of cartel IAFVs in Mexico. To this analysis can be added “vehicle number 24” in the picture gallery, which highlights fixed 50 cal. sniper rifles and machine guns found in or on various vehicles seized from the cartels. These represent multiple 50 cal. sniper rifles and heavy machine guns on fixed mounts inside vehicles and, in one instance, on the back of a vehicle with armored gun shield protection. While we have seen no photographic evidence of an organic (main) gun placed on cartel IAFVs as of yet, these weapons …

Mexican Cartel Tactical Note No. 15: Ied Recovered From Trunk Of Car By Police Station In Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, David A. Kuhn, Robert J. Bunker

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

"Now I Know The Law": Empowerment Of Mining Communities By An Environmental Non-Government Organisation (Engo), Yaw Asamoah, Kwabena Barima Antwi, Oheneba Akyeampong, Paul Baidoo, Daniel Owusu-Koranteng

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) became very prominent after the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 as vibrant social movements. Since then, ENGOs operat-ing at the local, regional, or global levels have been instrumental in environmental man-agement in both developed and developing countries. This study sought to investigate the performance of the Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining (WACAM), a local ENGO, in some selected mining communities in the Tarkwa-Nsuaem Municipali-ty, in the Western Region of Ghana. Situated in the intepretivist research philosophy, the study employed in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and observations to collect data from some staff of WACAM, …

Exploring Deliberative Democracy: Tribal Membership Meetings Under Indian Reorganization Act Constitutions, Jo Anne House

2010-2016 Archived Posters

This was a qualitative study of deliberation and participation in a tribal government setting. The results of this study identified high levels of deliberation and participation with a need to focus on improving the aspect of showing respect towards others. Improving deliberation can result in a more networked community, identification of a greater number of solutions, and greater acceptance of the solution selected.

Exploring Knowledge Sharing In The Department Of Defense, Melissa Ann Connell

2010-2016 Archived Posters

A phenomenological study using Nonaka and Takeuchi’s socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization (SECI) model explored the organized, continual method of tacit-to-explicit knowledge theory for organizational knowledge creation. Twenty participants shared their lived experiences in semi-structured interviews. Ten primary themes emerged, with results indicating the foundation for supporting the knowledge sharing process.

A Comparative Analysis Of Ghana's First-Past-The-Post (Fptp) Electoral System And The Proportional Representation (Pr) System, Joseph Kingsley Adjei

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Electoral systems translate the votes cast in a general election into seats won by parties and candidates. The choice of an electoral system is one of the most important institutional decisions for any democracy. In fact, the choice of a particular electoral system has a profound effect on the country concerned. Yet, once an electoral system has been used for some time, its impact on the political life of the country may be less recognized. Against this background, this paper provides an analysis of Ghana’s First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) electoral system and juxtaposes it against the Proportional Representation (PR) system to see …

Evaluation Of The Marketing Strategies Of The Case Management Society Of America, Veronica Chepak

Master in Public Administration Theses

No abstract provided.

Wireless Cell Towers And Antennae: Municipal And Private Relationship, James M. Collins

Master in Public Administration Theses

No abstract provided.

A Youth Revolt: Discerning The Impact Of “One-And-Done” Rule On Major Collegiate Championship Teams At The Division I Level, Erik Harris

Master in Public Administration Theses

No abstract provided.

Building Coalitions, Making Policy: The Politics Of The Clinton, Bush, And Obama Presidencies, By Martin A. Levin, Daniel Disalvo, And Martin M. Shapiro, Eds., José Villalobos

Departmental Papers (PS)

No abstract provided.

The Federal Banking Regulators: Agency Capture, Regulatory Failure, And Industry Collapse During The 2008 Financial Crisis, Justin Rex

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation examines the process of agency capture at four federal bank regulatory agencies leading up to the 2008 financial crisis: the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve, The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and The Office of Thrift Supervision. Though public administration and policy scholars have moved away from capture theory toward a more pluralistic understanding of agency policymaking, recent events like the Gulf oil spill, coal mining disasters, and the 2008 financial crisis have renewed attention to the role lax regulation plays in disasters and crises. As such, I set out to explore whether banks …

Social Construction And Political Decision Making In The American Prison System(S), Jeremiah Olson

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

With over two million inmates, the United States’ prison population is the largest in the world. Nearly one in one hundred Americans are behind bars, either in prisons or pre-trial detention facilities. The rapid growth in incarceration is well-documented. However, social science explanations often stop at the prison gates, with little work on treatment inside prisons. This black box approach ignores important bureaucratic decisions, including the provision of rehabilitative services and the application of punishment.

This dissertation offers a systematic analysis of treatment decisions inside the American prisons. I use a mixed methods approach, combining multiple quantitative datasets with environmental …

Land Restitution, Traditional Leadership And Belonging: Defining Barokologadi Identity, Robin L. Turner

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

How do government policies and practices affect struggles over collective identity and struggles over land? Examining the interconnections among collective identity struggles, land struggles and state policies and practices in post-apartheid South Africa, this paper argues that the government's contradictory policies and ambivalent practices have aggravated collective struggles over the boundaries of belonging. Specifically, the differing definitions of community set forth in traditional leadership, land tenure and land restitution policies exacerbate existing divisions among ‘communities’ concurrently subject to these policies and create practical policy dilemmas for decision-makers. This paper illustrates the interplay between public policies and collective identity struggles through …

Managing The Polarities Of Democracy: A Theoretical Framework For Positive Social Change, William J. Benet

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

People around the globe have embraced democracy to bring about positive social change to address our environmental, economic, and militaristic challenges. Yet, there is no agreement on a definition of democracy that can guide social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model is a unifying theory of democracy to guide healthy, sustainable, and just social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model consists of ten elements, organized as five polarity pairs: freedom & authority, justice & due process, diversity & equality, human-rights & communal-obligations, and participation & representation. In this model each element has positive aspects and negative aspects and …

Donor States And Donee States: Investigating Geographic Redistribution Of The Us Federal-Aid Highway Program 1974-2008, Pengyu Zhu, Jeffrey R. Brown

Urban Studies and Community Development Faculty Publications and Presentations

In 2009, the US government spent more than $42 billion on the federal-aid highway program. Most of this money was raised from motor vehicle taxes, whose proceeds are deposited in the highway trust fund. Federal motor vehicle user taxes flow into the fund and aid expenditures flow out from it to build and maintain highways and other transportation infrastructure. With so much money at stake it should be no surprise that expenditure decisions are the subject of intense political debate. Chief among these debates is the conflict between donor states, whose residents pay more in highway user taxes than the …

January Roundtable: Responding To The Syrian Crisis, Introduction, Claudia Fuentes Julio

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The World Next Genocide” by Simon Adams. New York Times, November 2012.

and

“Syria is Central to Holding Together the Mideast” by Condoleezza Rice. Washington Post, November 2012.

Syrians Crushed Between Humanitarianism And Realism, Philip Cunliffe

Human Rights & Human Welfare

With the UN High Commissioner for Refugees announcing early this year that the war in Syria may have claimed as many as 60,000 lives, two op-eds published late in 2012 usefully exemplify two contrasting frames that have thus far dominated international responses to the conflict—namely, the humanitarian frame and the geopolitical frame. Yet despite the apparent contrasts between these two frameworks, both reflect a similar contempt for the Syrian people and their right to self-determination. The humanitarian framing of the conflict emphasizes the scale of human suffering and the need to alleviate it, while the geopolitical frame accentuates political interests …

Syria: Not Libya, But Let’S Treat It Like It Is Anyway, Eric A. Heinze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The articles by Condoleezza Rice and Simon Adams advance a series of disquieting possibilities for the future of Syria if the US and other states fail to act. While I am sympathetic to the urgency with which both writers advance their claims, there is much strained and stretched logic—as well as outright naiveté—in both authors' arguments, especially Rice's.

Jeffersonian Ideals: Practical In The United States Of The 21st Century?, Charles William Gustafson Ii

Honors Program Theses

Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States, a statesman, lawyer, scientist, author of the Declaration of Independence, and a proponent of education in the United States of America. Understandably, his educational philosophy is inextricably linked to his political philosophy, as Gordon C. Lee puts it, " ... liberty without enlightenment seemed to Jefferson a contradiction in concepts, an anomaly," (Lee 1961, 2-3). Thomas Jefferson emphasized the importance of education in the United States, as Roy J. Honeywell puts it, "His educational plans were a very necessary part of his political and social reforms, and his educational ideas were as …

Good Publicity: The Legitimacy Of Public Communication Of Deliberation, Chad Raphael, Christopher F. Karpowitz

Communication

Although deliberative democratic theory values the principle of publicity, few empirical studies systematically assess the public communication of civic groups that deliberate over policy. The proliferation of such groups in contemporary politics, and of uncertainty about their legitimacy, suggests the need for such study. Drawing on contemporary deliberative theory, we derive a set of legitimate publicity indicators for assessing how well groups report their deliberative processes and policy conclusions. We demonstrate the reliability and utility of these measures in a comparative content analysis of the final reports of three common kinds of deliberative bodies: a governmentstakeholder task force, an activist …

Spirits Of The Cold War: Contesting Worldviews In The Classical Age Of American Security Strategy. By Ned O’Gorman, Timothy Barney

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In February 1952, Congressman O. K. Armstrong of Missouri was invited to give a keynote speech at a convention called the Conference on Psychological Strategy in the Cold War, where he declared a maxim that, by that time, likely did not raise many eyebrows: “Our primary weapons will not be guns, but ideas . . . and truth itself.” Rep. Armstrong spoke from experience—a few months before, he had made national headlines at a peace treaty signing in San Francisco by blindsiding Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko with a map locating every secret Gulag prison camp. Calling the Soviet …

International Standardization Compliance In Aviation, Tyler Brogden Spence

Open Access Theses

The commercial aviation industry is global in the sense that passengers travel around the world from destination to destination. It is also global in that the states of the world (countries) regulate the industry domestically and internationally. There is a unique stage where the world comes together to promote aviation, discuss ideas and establish international standards. This stage is the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The 191 current member states signed treaties acknowledging their commitment to abiding by the standards and practices established by ICAO. No state is 100 percent compliant with international standards, however, and the purpose of this …

Natural Resource Conflict: The Bakassi Lesson For Sudan And The Republic Of South Sudan Over Abyei, Chux Ibekwe

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

The split of Sudan into two sovereign states, Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan, in July 20 II did not come as a surprise to many interested parties to the Sudanese conflict. Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan have intensified their dispute over an oil rich border region of Abyei. This article looks at the history of another border dispute between Nigeria and Cameroun over Bakassi peninsula with the aim of identifying mistakes made by the two neighbors, Nigeria and Cameroun, in trying to resolve the dispute. Specifically, this study suggests paths Sudan and the Republic of South …

Book Review: Mugabe And The Politics Of Security In Zimbabwe, Mackenzie L. Duelge

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Review of Mugabe and the Politics of Security in Zimbabwe, by Abiodun Alao. (2012). Montreal & Kingston: MeGill-Queen's University Press.

Introduction: The Year Of Ghana At Kennesaw State University, Dan Paracka, Sam Abaidoo

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Introduction to the issue.

Analysis Of Technology Integration In Teacher Education In Ghana, Douglas D. Agyei

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Ghana’s Education Reforms launched in June 2007 introduced Computer literacy not on-ly as a new subject, but also as a tool to enhance teaching and learning. This study pro-vides a situational analysis of the pedagogical issues associated with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) use in teacher education in Ghana. The methodology used in the study focused on meta-data analysis in which issues associated with integrat-ing ICT in Ghana’s education were re-examined to provide a better picture that will sup-port future achievement of teaching and learning with ICT. The evidence suggests that the challenges of ICT use in education do not …

Exclusive Breastfeeding Practices Of Mothers In Duakor, A Traditional Migrant Community In Cape Coast, Ghana, Solomon Sika-Bright, Georgina Yaa Oduro

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Ensuring child health and well-being is critical in Ghana’s development. Central to initia-tives for ensuring child health is the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended exclusive breastfeeding, which is increasingly being promoted in Ghana. As the name connotes, the practice requires that babies from age zero to six months are breastfed. This practice is however interpreted and practiced differently in line with the traditional mode of feeding babies in most communities in Ghana. This paper presents the findings of a study that examined how mothers breastfeed their babies in the first six months at Dua-kor, a traditional migrant community in Cape …