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Full-Text Articles in Political Science
Analysis Of State Climate Action Plans: What Influences States To Adopt, Ethan Yaroch
Analysis Of State Climate Action Plans: What Influences States To Adopt, Ethan Yaroch
Honors Theses
Federal-level policies aimed to address and mitigate the effects that will arise from climate change have become an extremely polarizing issue in the United States. Given this policy stalemate, individual states have stepped up to address the national-level shortcomings by publishing state-level Climate Action Plans (CAPs). CAPs mainly consist of emissions mitigation goals and other non-binding policy initiatives that provide a basis for future compulsory legislation. This paper examines whether party identification in the state legislature, public opinion, susceptibility to the risks associated with climate change, and proximity to neighboring states with published CAPs influence states to adopt CAPs. Employing …
Suicide Attacks In Afghanistan: Why Now?, Ghulam Farooq Mujaddidi
Suicide Attacks In Afghanistan: Why Now?, Ghulam Farooq Mujaddidi
Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Why, contrary to their predecessors, did the Taliban resort to use of suicide attacks in the 2000s in Afghanistan? By drawing from terrorist innovation literature and Michael Horowitz’s adoption capacity theory—a theory of diffusion of military innovation—the author argues that suicide attacks in Afghanistan is better understood as an innovation or emulation of a new technique to retaliate in asymmetric warfare when insurgents face arms embargo, military pressure, and have direct links to external terrorist groups. The findings of my in-depth case study of Afghanistan between 1978 and 2010 support the proposition and show that it was an …
Returning Attention To Policy Content In Diffusion Study, John M. Fulwider
Returning Attention To Policy Content In Diffusion Study, John M. Fulwider
Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Policy diffusion research pays virtually no attention to policy content. Yet we should expect content to shape the adoption of any policy--this is what legislators and policy makers, after all, fight about. Thus the extent and speed of diffusion likely critically depend on policy content, which the current literature virtually ignores. This dissertation shows how we can better understand policy diffusion by taking policy content seriously. Paying attention to policy content, including how it is debated and understood by legislators, has immediate payoffs in the sense that two literatures largely ignored until now by diffusion researchers-- policy typologies and policy …