Political Science Commons^™

The Collapse Of The Afghan State And Its Relation To Us Policy, Omar Saradi

University Honors Theses

The main inspiration for this has been down to my curiosity of my heritage. The events described, particularly in the 1970's, were things that were contemporary to my family, and the escape from Afghanistan as refugee was an experience that was firsthand for my dad--who escaped in 1979 to Pakistan to claim refugee status in the US. One of the things that struck me the most in his story of escaping on foot with a group of villagers, was that the centers for refugees in Pakistan were not the cleanest and housed a crowded room of people who were stuck …

Women Parliamentarians In India Since 1991: Challenges And Opportunities, Vatsala Bhusry

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

India gained a new economic orientation in 1991 following the policy of economic liberalization. It offered the opportunities to close the gender gap in various fields including the political field as visualized in the original goal of the Indian constitution. However, there is an acute underrepresentation of women at the national political level and there is a lack of evidence-based research studies to analyze this gap. This study maps the political trajectories of 13 elected women leaders holding offices at the national level since 2019. To better understand the challenges and opportunities at both macro and micro levels they came …

Madame Justice Will Save Our Democracy: Gender Bias And Perceptions Of The High Court In Transitional Regimes, Christopher Shortell, Melody E. Valdini

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

While existing literature has established that women leaders are stereotyped as more likely to uphold the norms of democracy, the power of this effect in the non-democratic context is not established. We address this gap and argue that the context of regime transition cultivates a unique dynamic in which the stereotypes associated with women justices become especially valuable to both citizens and the state. However, we argue that this perception of women contributing to the health of democracy is not constant across all citizens equally; instead, those people with high levels of hostile bias against women are more likely to …

Nationalist And Non-Nationalist Christianity In The United States, Aaron Epperson

University Honors Theses

Christian nationalism has broken into the American news cycle over the last few years through its connection to former President Donald Trump, and it's closely associated with violent events like the January 6th insurrection and the Charlottesville, VA, Unite the Right rally. However, its close association with Trump and depiction in a 24-hour news cycle makes defining what Christian nationalism is--and is not--difficult for those unfamiliar with nationalism and the broader American Christian tradition. This paper hopes to briefly explore what Christian nationalism is within the United States through an exploration of nationalism itself and a discussion of nationalist and …

Global Climate Governance: Does Bilateral Cooperation Matter?, Nataliya Stranadko

Dissertations and Theses

The international relations literature looks at the climate regime from a perspective of power distribution, state interests, institutions, and multilateral negotiations. The international law literature focuses on legal analysis and design of international climate agreements. The transnational governance literature examines the participation of transnational actors at different levels of governance. However, each of these disciplines overlooks the trend in bilateral cooperation between national and subnational actors in a multilateral setting, which arises as part of the construction of the international regime. Why do national and subnational public actors in global climate governance cooperate bilaterally when multilateral cooperation already exists? What …

The China Balloon Incident: The Drama Within The Drama, Mel Gurtov

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The recent China Balloon Incident has all the appearance of high drama, though the heat is mainly provided by domestic politics rather than a strategic face-off of the U-2 or Cuba Missile Crisis variety. This is a drama in three acts. In Act 1, “Discovery”, the Biden administration went into action mode on finding that a Chinese “spy” balloon had crossed the US. An air force jet shot the balloon down, displaying Cold War-style toughness with China. In Act 2, “Evaluation”, new facts emerged that shed further light on the episode. Act 3, “Blaming”, involves mutual recriminations that obscure the …

Intersectionality Pertaining To The Disproportionate Rates Of Black Women In Prisons And Jails, Mackenzie Heller

University Honors Theses

The incarceration rates of Black women in America surpass even all other demographics. Yet, Black women are often not on the news when discussing prison rates in the United States. Rather we see Black men, Hispanic men, and so forth. While these people do make up large portions of the prison system they are seeing a decline in their incarceration rates. Black women are often pushed to the sidelines when discussing matters that can be seen as central to their livelihoods.

This thesis addresses the intersectionality that only Black women experience and how that affects their imprisonment rates and experiences …

Explaining Backlash: Social Hierarchy And Men’S Rejection Of Women’S Rights Reforms, Lindsay J. Benstead, Ragnhild L. Muriaas, Vibeke Wang

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Governments promote gender-sensitive policies, yet little is known about why reform campaigns evoke backlash. Drawing on social position theory, we test whether marginalized (women’s organizations) or intrusive (Western donors) messengers cause resistance across public rights (quotas) and private rights (land reform). Using a framing experiment implemented among 1,704 Malawians, we find that females’ attitudes are unaffected by campaigns, while backlash occurs among patrilineal and matrilineal males. Backlash among men is more common for sensitive private rights (land reform) than public rights (quotas) and Western donors than women’s organizations, suggesting complex effects generally more consistent with the intrusiveness hypothesis.

Do Islamist Parties Help Or Hinder Women? Party Institutionalization, Piety And Responsiveness To Female Citizens, Mounah Abdel-Samad, Lindsay J. Benstead

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Does electing Islamist parties help or hurt women? Due to Ennahda winning a plurality in the 2011 elections and women from all parties winning 31% of seats, Tunisia offers an opportunity to test the impact of legislator gender and Islamist orientation on women's representation. Using original 2012 surveys of 40 Tunisian parliamentarians (MPs) and 1200 citizens, we find that electing female and Islamists MPs improves women's symbolic and service responsiveness by increasing the likelihood that female citizens are aware of and contact MPs. Electing Islamist female MPs has a positive impact on women's symbolic and service responsiveness, but decreases the …

Comparative Foreign Aid Analysis: Replacing The Competition Between Donors With Complementary Aid Policies, Emily Melinda Baker

Dissertations and Theses

Foreign Aid has been a topic of study for decades with few concrete findings on whether it is effective or not. Contemporary foreign aid is divided into two camps: the West and China, with little cooperation and plenty of politics between them. In this thesis I analyze the effectiveness of Western aid and Chinese aid in twelve sub-Saharan African states using annual HDI scores and GDP. I find there is a strong correlation between Western aid and the development measures used as well as cases where Chinese aid is more effective than Western aid. With these findings, I argue that …

Involving More People In Election Observation With Stephanie Frank Singer, Stephanie Singer

PDXPLORES Podcast

In this episode of PDXPLORES, Senior Fellow of PSU's Center for Public Service, Stephanie Frank Singer, discusses a community-based civics education program that addresses the need for citizens from diverse identity groups to participate in election monitoring, an activity that holds the electoral process accountable, ensures the integrity of the electoral system and builds public trust in democratic institutions. PSU's Community Engaged Research Academy supports the project co-led by PSU professor and political scientist Lindsay J. Benstead. Project partners include the League of Women Voters of Oregon and the Oregon Secretary of State Elections Division.

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Legislative Procedures And Perceptions Of Legitimacy, Megan Elizabeth Cox

Dissertations and Theses

While mechanisms of legitimacy development have been extensively studied in governments as a cohesive whole, procedural legitimation of the legislative branch has not been explored. Using a procedural justice framework to identify indicators of openness in legislative rules, this paper theorizes that the presence or absence of these indicators will be the key factor in public perceptions of legitimacy of the legislature. This paper hypothesizes that where more indicators are present, a legislature will be viewed as more legitimate by its citizens as compared to a legislature with fewer indicators.

Comparing Indonesia and the Philippines, two presidential democracies in Southeast …

The Experiences That Most Affected The Political Socialization Of Us Undergraduates, Dan Ha

Anthós

Most articles about the Gen Z’s political beliefs focus a lot on what they believe, but not so much on how they came to or why they hold those beliefs. Through a series of interviews and one focus group meeting, I investigated what events or experiences were most instrumental in shaping the beliefs of some current US undergraduate students. I found that experiences with very strong personal impacts were the most influential in shaping the participants’ current beliefs; experiences in which they or those close to them were negatively misrepresented or in which they began to distrust certain authority figures …

Same Game, Different Rules: Pointillist Imperialism And The New Cartography Of Great Power Competition, Andrew Jesse Shaughnessy

Dissertations and Theses

For centuries, "Great Powers" competed for global hegemony not only through building up military strength and amassing wealth, but through the formal acquisition of distant lands, conquered and folded into their borders. Today, core states continue to vie for global power, but no longer exert formal control or sovereignty over less powerful states. So how has the nature of great power competition in peripheral states changed? Most scholars studying great power competition measure power in terms of military and economic resources, often failing to account for a third, crucial dimension in international power politics: the impact of distributed networks of …

What Happened To The “New Middle Class”? The 2016 Borp (Brazil’S Once-Rising Poor) Survey, Benjamin Junge, Sean T. Mitchell, Charles H. Klein, David De Micheli

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This research note provides a detailed account of the development and implementation of a household survey conducted in 2016 as part of a larger investigation into the lifeways and political subjectivities of Brazil’s “once-rising poor,” the demographic sector comprising poor and working-class people who experienced various forms of socioeconomic mobility in the early twenty-first century. After reflecting on the challenges of maintaining a critical perspective on class labels and relations that were intensely contested at the time, the article introduces the survey sample (n = 1,204), highlighting variables captured. It then establishes the demographic profile, mobility experiences, political values, attitudes, …

Feminism And #Metoo In The Lives Of Orthodox Jewish Women, Rebecca S. Battin

University Honors Theses

In recent years, the #MeToo movement in the US has normalized discussing sexual harassment and assault against women, as well as encouraged survivors to come forward with their experiences like never before. Though this movement has undoubtedly affected much of secular and even religious America, how much has the #MeToo movement affected the more extreme, conservative communities of Orthodox Judaism? Though some research has been conducted as to the effects of the patriarchy and sexual assault on women in some Jewish communities, there is little research regarding how the women in these communities may have been impacted by the recent …

The American Grammar Of Policing As An Afterlife Of Slavery: Arguments For An Abolition Democracy, Emily E. Buss

University Honors Theses

Prison abolition has entered mainstream conversation in recent years as the uniquely American carceral system comes increasingly under fire for its racial disparities, police brutality and prison labor. While these issues are sometimes framed as newly emerging, this paper utilizes a Foucauldian genealogical approach in conversation with works by W. E. B. Du Bois, Angela Davis, and other thinkers from the black radical tradition to interrogate the evolving tendencies and underlying historical forces of racial capitalism and white supremacy that shape the contemporary American prison industrial complex. Emerging out of the experience of racial slavery, these forces constitute what Hortense …

The Cult Fascist: Establishing Cultic Behavior In Proud Boys And Incels, Aj Ashland

University Honors Theses

Is the Alt-Right a cult? Certainly, we can see religious fervor intertwine with politics as we see in the far-right, with artwork of Trump being crucified like Jesus, pierced in his side by Nancy Pelosi analogous to Longinus (Cole, 2020), or in the golden statue of Trump at CPAC (Beauchamp, 2021). But, do we see similar, potentially cultic, behavior within Alt-Right groups? It turns out we do see this behavior. Within this study, I determine via the Advanced Bonewits' Cult Danger Evaluation Frame what level of cultic behavior exists within Incels and Proud Boys. In doing so, I intend to …

Global Governance Or Global Government? An Examination Of Anarchy Vs. Hierarchy, Global Civil Society And International Governmental Organizations, Grace R. Purvis

University Honors Theses

The goal of this paper is to argue that we currently have a system of global government rather than global governance. To prove this, It examines two main areas, international hierarchy and global society. In terms of hierarchy, it considers the existence of hierarchy among nations as well as a practical hierarchy in global decision making and functioning. This is shown via an examination of American Empire, Power Transition Theory, the Washington Consensus, the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The second major focus, global society, considers how nations utilize international organizations and technology to allow for the …

The Meaning And Measure Of Deliberative Systems, Darren Michael Mccormick

Dissertations and Theses

Deliberative democratic theory emphasizes deliberation as central to the health of democracy. It has grown to be one of the most active and popular stands of political theory. In response to criticisms that deliberative democracy was unworkable at the large scale, the field made a systemic turn and now conceives of political communities as potential deliberative systems. While advancements have been made in measuring the quality of deliberation that occurs in deliberative forums, the practice of measuring the quality of deliberative systems is in its infancy. Authors have proposed various theoretical paths to assessing deliberative systems but no standardized method …

Measuring Morality In The 2020 Us Presidential Election, Scott Edward Atkins

Dissertations and Theses

This study explores the moral content evident in speeches by 2020 US Presidential Candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Drawing on Moral Foundations Theory (Haidt, 2013), I test the hypotheses that each candidate's moral content, as measured by the use of certain morally salient keywords, will fall along patterns based on their political affiliation. In testing these hypotheses, I also present a comparison of keyword analysis methods. The first uses a simple word count procedure alongside the Moral Foundations Dictionary 2.0, developed by Frimer et al. (2017), which scores a document based on the presence of words from each of …

The Politics Of Women's Presence On High Courts: Bias And The Conditional Nature Of Cultivating Legitimacy, Christopher Shortell, Melody E. Valdini

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

While we know that women's presence in the legislature positively impacts how citizens view the institution, little is known about the impact of women's presence on the legitimacy of high courts. We argue that despite differences in public expectations for courts, women's presence on the high court does impact citizen perceptions of legitimacy. However, this effect is dependent on both the level and the type of bias held by citizens. That is, when a person feels hostile bias toward women, the bias disrupts the potential legitimacy that the court could gain. On the other hand, we argue that benevolent sexism …

Can A Large-Landscape Conservation Vision Contribute To Achieving Biodiversity Targets?, Mark Hebblewhite, Jodi A. Hilty, Sara Williams, Harvey Locke, Charles Chester, David Johns, Gregory Kehm, Wendy L. Francis

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Founded in 1993, the Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) vision was one of the earliest large-landscape conservation visions. Despite growing recognition of large-landscape conservation strategies, there have been few tests to date of conservation gains achieved through such approaches. We tested for conservation gains in the Y2Y region of North America following initiation of the Y2Y conservation vision in 1993 using a counterfactual spatiotemporal comparison and tracking change in five different conservation metrics. First, we enumerated the area of land within Y2Y in designated protected areas. We then compared the rate of change of protected area growth before- and after-initiation of …

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 …

Trump's Legacy In The Middle East: Strategic Shift And The Geopolitics Of American Foreign Policy In The Region, Bilel Kriaa

Dissertations and Theses

The last six months of the Trump administration witnessed interesting developments regarding its legacy in the Middle East. The normalization of ties between four Arab states and Israel constituted major breakthroughs not only in the regional inter-state relations but also for the American foreign policy in the region.

In this context, this thesis offers insights into how to understand and evaluate the administration's approach towards these developments. Based on systematic and empirical research, I analyze a corpus comprised of Trump-era foreign policy documents regarding the Iranian and Israeli-Palestinian questions. I find, firstly, that the Trump administration pursued a strategic shift …

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 Worth Of Risk: Political Participation And Risk Perceptions, Siri Grubb

Dissertations and Theses

This study draws on concepts from political and risk communication to inform our understanding of what motivates people to be politically active. Inspired by concerns that traditional models of participation do not perform as well among younger and more diverse populations, alternate variables are considered including risk perceptions surrounding policy issues and political parties. Results show that established political variables such as political interest and civic duty remain strongly associated with participation, while offering support for several new variables of interest from the risk communication literature. In the present study, threat and efficacy perceptions explained additional variance in political participation …

The Afghanistan Debacle, Mel Gurtov

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article assesses the US debacle in Afghanistan in light of the Vietnam War and US forever wars.

Liberalism, Settlement, Sacrifice: Towards A Genealogy Of Sacrificial Politics, Marshall Scheider, Adam Culver

McNair Symposium

In recent years, political theorists have begun to explore the sacrificial dimensions of liberalism and neoliberalism in the global North. Little of this work, however, grapples with the ways settler colonialism informs contemporary political sacrifice or conceptions of the sacrificial. This paper traces a genealogy of contemporary political sacrifice through the archive of early British colonialism in North America. When theorists ignore this archive, they do more than render colonization mute: they also fail to apprehend what I term political sacrifice’s differential function—the mechanism by which sacrifice’s burdens fall on subordinated groups while its benefits accrue to the socially, politically, …

Presidential Warfare And The “Forever Wars”, Mel Gurtov

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article examines the origins and development of the US “forever wars” in recent decades, and its implications both for democracy and warfare.