Political Science Commons^™

No Coup, No Conscience: Coup-Proofing In The Armenian Genocide, Rachel Svoyskiy

CMC Senior Theses

The Armenian Genocide functioned as a form of coup-proofing under the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Existing scholarship emphasizes nationalism, wartime radicalization, and security dilemmas, but does not fully account for why the military complied, why dissenters were removed, or how Armenian property became tied to political loyalty. Applying Hicham Bou Nassif’s framework of coup-proofing, this study examines four tactics the CUP used to secure military obedience while carrying out mass violence. First, the regime framed Armenians as an existential threat to align the officer corps ideologically with the state. Second, it promoted the material interests of military and …

Politics Of A Silent Pandemic: Antimicrobial Resistance And State Capacity In India And Nigeria, Mia Kelly

CMC Senior Theses

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) has emerged as one of the most pressing yet widely underestimated health threats of the 21st century; this thesis explores the potentially devastating global impact of this “silent pandemic”, exposing how deeply health outcomes depend on political choices, regulatory capacity, and economic constraints. Although the danger of spreading drug-resistant pathogens is now widely acknowledged in both the scientific and political communities, states differ in their abilities to contain the issue, with low- and middle-income countries facing the greatest obstacles to national action plan implementation. This thesis investigates these disparities through a comparison of India and Nigeria, two …

Keeping America Ahead: The Global Chip Conundrum, Ethan Chen

CMC Senior Theses

Semiconductors underpin nearly every aspect of modern economic, military, and technological power. Yet while the United States pioneered chip innovation and design, it now heavily depends on foreign manufacturing, particularly Taiwan and the Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company who produce more than 90% of the world’s leading edge chips. This thesis investigates how the U.S. lost its fabrication leadership, what risks its current dependence creates, and what strategies can most effectively restore domestic capacity and resilience in both the short term and long term. By going through historical analysis of industrial development, recent policy evaluation such as export controls and the …

From Endowment To Extraction: Critical Mineral Governance And Supply-Chain Integration In The Arctic, Charles Bollwerk

CMC Senior Theses

Annexing Greenland, making Canada the 51st State – what’s it all about? Critical minerals are often treated as a geological and national security problem that can be fixed through strength and coercion. This thesis argues that, in the Arctic, governance structures are what determine whether critical mineral wealth becomes strategically useful. Through a comparative qualitative analysis of Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Russia, and the Nordic countries, it examines what drives variation in critical mineral extraction and supply-chain integration across Arctic states, an especially relevant topic as Western states seek to reduce dependence on Chinese-controlled supply chains. The analysis applies four variables …

Revenge Of The Interceptors? The Dod, Congress, And The Return Of Space-Based Missile Defense During Trump 45, Chad Mcelroy

CMC Senior Theses

The initiation of the Golden Dome for America program has brought space-based missile defense (SBMD) to the forefront of American national security policy and rekindled debates that had laid dormant since the administration of President Ronald Reagan. How, forty-two years after President Reagan first proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, did SBMD return as a national priority? In lieu of public information about the ongoing Golden Dome initiative, this thesis explores the first Trump administration, otherwise known as Trump 45, in order to analyze the development of SBMD proposals by its proponents in Congress and the Department of Defense. I used …

Authoritarian Development & Political Economy Of East Asia: The Making Of South Korea’S Developmental Regime, Christopher J. Chung

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the historical evolution of South Korea's developmental trajectory during the Park Chung-hee era (1961-1979), a period that left an indelible mark on the country's political economy and industrial landscape. Rather than treating Park's regime as its own starting point, this thesis situates it within a longer historical arc beginning with Japanese colonial rule and continuing through Syngman Rhee's aid-dependent republic, arguing that Korea's developmental success was neither institutionally inevitable nor externally engineered, but the product of a historically specific and ideologically driven state-building project. Four primary questions guide this research: what historical conditions shaped the institutional landscape …

A Reevaluation Of South Korea’S Economic Rise: The Defense Industrial Base, Timothy Lee

CMC Senior Theses

This paper seeks to reexamine how the Republic of Korea (ROK) was able to rise from one of the world's poorest economies after the Korean War to a leading international defense exporter today. Existing development theories—such as dependency theory, export-led industrialization, and world-systems theory—each offer partial explanations but none fully accounts for the ROK's rapid economic growth. To address this gap, the paper analyzes U.S. foreign aid data, U.S. national security documents, and the economic data of the ROK’s chaebols, family-owned business conglomerates, to reevaluate two key variables: the United States' strategic imperative to contain communism during the Cold War, …

The Vestiges Of The German Democratic Republic: Memory Politics And Xenophobia In Former East Germany, Diana Zhou

CMC Senior Theses

From the 2015 migration influx onward, xenophobic and nationalist sentiments permeated Germany’s national political discourse. The former socialist territories in eastern Germany have proven particularly susceptible to far-right, anti-immigration, and anti-integration rhetoric. This thesis explores the mnemonic foundations of xenophobic sentiments in former East German states, tracing the development of an antifascist yet ethnically nationalist mnemonic framework to the state-sanctioned myths and invented traditions of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). As the loss of a collective GDR identity produced a reactionary rehabilitation of this framework post-unification, the racial and ethnic “other” — migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees — became constructed …

Lessons Unlearned: Cultural Competence And The Limits Of U.S. Army Doctrine In Iraq And Afghanistan, Kylie W. Ha

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines how the absence of comprehensive cultural and linguistic competence within U.S. Army doctrine contributed to operational and ethical failures during the wars in Iraq (2003–2011) and Afghanistan (2001–2021). It focuses on the gap between doctrinal recognition of culture and language and the failure to institutionalize these elements as measurable, force-wide competencies. The thesis analyzes doctrinal publications spanning the period from 2001 to 2014 and finds that, while these publications increasingly acknowledged the importance of cultural awareness, language, and local context—particularly in counterinsurgency operations—these elements were not embedded as standardized requirements across training, planning, or evaluation. Iraq and …

Eurovision As A Platform For Cultural Diplomacy In Times Of Conflict, Lucy Meza

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines how states utilize the Eurovision Song Contest as a platform for soft power, focusing on the conditions under which cultural performance translates into reputational gains. Drawing on Joseph Nye’s concept of soft power, Biasioli’s theory of songwashing, Zamorano’s typology of cultural diplomacy, Anholt’s competitive identity framework, and Feklyunina’s analysis of identity and narrative, it argues that Eurovision’s effectiveness as a soft power platform is fundamentally contingent on the alignment between a state’s cultural narrative and dominant international perceptions of its legitimacy. Through a qualitative comparative case study approach, the thesis examines two nations whose Eurovision participation during …

The Jamaica That Dreams: A Normative Application Of Developmental Theory, Tamoy Pitt

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines Jamaica’s persistent underdevelopment through Martha Nussbaum's normative application of the capabilities approach as per her conception in Creating Capabilities. Through this approach, the paper will argue that Jamaica’s underdevelopment is a result of the failure of its domestic institutions to provide all citizens with the substantive freedoms and capabilities necessary to live lives of dignity. Originally detailed by Amartya Sen in his book Development as Freedom, the capabilities approach posits freedom as both the means and ends to development while rejecting contemporary approaches to development such as GDP, Utilitarianism, or Rawlsian resource-based approaches as insufficient frameworks for …

Assessing The Feasibility Of Small Modular Reactor Deployment On Islands In Southeast Asia And The Pacific, Hayden C. Beauchemin

CMC Senior Theses

This study looks at the feasibility of using Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) to provide island microgrids in Southeast Asia and the Pacific with clean, reliable electricity. SMRs are compared to current methods of electricity generation, namely diesel generators, as well as to renewable alternatives. Policymakers will face geopolitical, technical, economic, and domestic political challenges to SMR deployment. The key considerations of SMRs, including economic viability, safety approaches, public attitudes, and diplomatic relations are considered, and solutions are identified for issues such as financing and nuclear waste disposal. The analysis reinforces the conclusion that SMR deployment is feasible for islands in …

Understanding The Flow: Deconstructing The Link Between Immigrants And Fentanyl, Madeline F. Nesbitt

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explains how a false link between undocumented immigration and fentanyl becomes widely accepted in the United States. Empirical data show that most fentanyl enters through legal ports of entry and that U.S. citizens account for the majority of those caught transporting it. Why, then, do 41% of Americans attribute overdose deaths to migrants trafficking fentanyl? This project examines how this myth is built, repeated, and sustained, and what policy consequences follow from it.

When complex social problems lack clear culprits, political actors often manufacture them through scapegoating. Current literature documents how political actors link immigrants to drug crimes, …

Tilting The Playing Field: Executive Attacks On Big Law Firms As A Mechanism Of American Competitive Authoritarianism, Sajah Ali

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines how President Donald Trump’s executive campaign against elite law firms, collectively known as “Big Law,” serves as a concrete case study of competitive authoritarianism in action. Drawing on Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way’s framework in their work The Path to American Authoritarianism, this thesis applies their four pillars of competitive authoritarianism to the administration’s executive orders targeting major law firms and maps those pillars onto three distinct firm responses: fighting back, capitulation, and quiet retreat. Situating this case study within the broader political context of Trump’s second term, this thesis finds that while the United States has …

Morals Without Movement: Veganism, Contentious Politics, And The Lifestyle Politics Constraint, Luke M. Carfaro

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines whether veganism constitutes a social movement through Social Movement Theory frameworks, emphasizing Sidney Tarrow's Power in Movement. Through analysis of veganism's empirical properties (collective challenge, common purpose, collective identity, and sustained interaction) and key procedural mechanisms (framing, mobilizing structures, and repertoires of contention), this thesis determines that veganism fails to meet the empirical criteria of a social movement and is more accurately classified as a lifestyle movement—a movement in which political participation is expressed through private consumption rather than sustained collective contention. Using the Make America Healthy Again movement as a counterexample, this thesis comparatively illustrates …

Cultural Dissonance: Western Hierarchical Structures In Unesco’S Representative List Of The Intangible Cultural Heritage Of Humanity, Chumnan J. Sangsvang Iii

CMC Senior Theses

This paper explores how the heritage ideologies of the academic and legal traditions of the “West” have exerted influence over the modern conception of heritage in order to fulfill their own ideas of value. It uses a combination of anthropological theory, ethnographic research, and international law to analyze this phenomenon, first identifying the theory and history behind culture, heritage, and civilization in international law. The paper then goes on to analyze UNESCO’s ICH designation and the consequences of Western heritage construction from 4 case studies, each variably removed from the West: Cases from Greece, Uruguay, Malawi, and Tonga will identify …

Bitcoin And The American Conflict Over Money And Property, Jacob Smagula

CMC Senior Theses

I argue that Bitcoin is the latest expression of the recurring American conflict over who controls the terms of money and property, and that the political coalition formed around Bitcoin shares the same characteristics as earlier coalitions formed around this struggle. I review three historical cases that each produced a coalition opposing the existing monetary order: the Bank War of the 1830s, the Free Silver movement of the 1890s, and the populist backlash against the Federal Reserve during the 1979 Farm Crisis and the 2008 Great Recession. I find that Bitcoin’s architecture, which allows for self-custody, permissionless access, and an …

Moving The Goalposts: Saudi Arabia, Football, And The Changing Rules Of Global Legitimacy, Sanskriti S. Kumar

CMC Senior Theses

Most commentary on Gulf state sports investment concludes that sportswashing fails: Saudi Arabia's favorability ratings remain low, its human rights situation has deteriorated, and Western public opinion shows no measurable improvement. This thesis argues that this conclusion applies the wrong standard. Asking whether Saudi Arabia has become more admired misses the more consequential question of whether it has become more accepted, and treating those two outcomes as equivalent produces misleading results. This thesis develops an original Normalization-Attraction Framework to evaluate whether the Saudi Public Investment Fund's October 2021 acquisition of Newcastle United Football Club has generated measurable political returns. The …

From Collective Punishment To Collective Action, Samuel N. Johnson-Saeger

CMC Senior Theses

Regime change may be sought in two primary ways, absent a turn to internal or external violence: through nonviolent resistance, from within, and sanctions, from abroad. This paper is about how those two pathways are intertwined. I challenge two different strands of the existing literature. First, I show that Liou et al. (2022)'s finding that sanctions increase the predicted probability of nonviolent resistance movement progress is subject to substantial upward bias from country heterogeneity. Incorporating country fixed effects, I show that sanctions, on average, have no statistically significant effect on resistance outcomes. Second, I challenge Chenoweth and Stephan (2008)'s argument …

Sinking City To Breakthrough City: A Political Analysis And Evaluation Of Indonesia's Capital City Relocation From Jakarta To Nusantara, Yuji Jones

CMC Senior Theses

This paper analyzes Indonesia’s national decision to move its capital city from Jakarta to Nusantara. Indonesia is facing a dire catastrophe in its most populous city. The land surrounding Jakarta is sinking, and without significant mitigation efforts, the streets will be submerged by 2045. This is a slow-motion disaster coming for Indonesia and Jakarta. This left the country with a crucial decision: to save the capital city. In response to this environmental crisis, Indonesia’s government has committed to making a nationwide and ambitious decision to move the capital to Nusantara, a smaller city bustling with tropical forests 1,000 kilometers away, …

Behemoth Unbound: An Internal Critique Of Carl Schmitt’S Nazi-State Structure, Zaynamin Murtaza

CMC Senior Theses

This paper offers an internal critique of Carl Schmitt's Nazi-era state theory from the perspective of the counterrevolutionary political-theological tradition to which Schmitt belongs. Using Schmitt's political-theological method which holds that all political theories have a systematic theological structure, the paper argues that Schmitt's 1933 turn to National Socialism contradicts this tradition. The paper proceeds in five sections. The first establishes the political-theological framework that will be utilized throughout the paper. The second develops Schmitt's concept of the katechon—the restrainer of lawlessness drawn from Christian eschatology— which he uses as a model for his theory of the state. The …

Who Gets To Stay? Selective Compliance, Local Power, And The Politics In San Juan Capistrano, Daniel Fernández

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines how California cities can satisfy state housing mandates while systematically under producing affordable housing. Using San Juan Capistrano as a case study, it documents a pattern of selective compliance. That is, a formal planning obligations are met while local governance tools, place-based identity, and discretionary processes that consistently filter housing outcome towards market-rate development and away from lower-income production. The findings suggest that closing California's affordability gap requires enforcement tools capable of reaching beyond formal planning compliance to address the governance mechanisms that shape what actually gets built.

Transformed, Not Resolved: Ethnic Federalism And The Politics Of Conflict In Ethiopia, Melayae L. Houser

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis investigates whether Ethiopia's system of ethnic federalism resolved the longstanding conflicts that have characterized the country's political history or instead transformed them into new manifestations. Introduced in 1991 after the collapse of the Derg regime, ethnic federalism reorganized Ethiopia into ethnically defined regional states and granted groups constitutional rights to self-governance and self-determination. The system aimed to address historical grievances stemming from decades of centralized, exclusionary governance.

Employing a four-part analytical framework, this thesis analyzes two case studies: the Tigray War of 2020–2022 and the Oromia-Somali border conflict, to argue that ethnic federalism did not resolve Ethiopia's underlying …

The Tech-Nuclear Renaissance: A New Critical Juncture For American Nuclear Energy Policy, Henry P. Otte

CMC Senior Theses

Nuclear energy has re-emerged as a central priority in American energy policy. This thesis examines the Trump administration’s efforts to support nuclear energy development and plant restarts, and asks whether today’s nuclear renaissance represents a critical juncture for nuclear energy policy. By analyzing American, French, and Swedish nuclear energy history, this thesis applies a three-variable analytical framework, state autonomy and administrative structure, political permeability, and crisis influence, to identify the institutional conditions necessary for durable policy change and evaluate the structural characteristics of this new environment. The central finding is that today’s push is distinct from prior attempts at expansion, …

Living Networks: Reimagining Social Capital Beyond Institutions, Meghna Pamula

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the decline of social capital in the United States and explores how community connection can be rebuilt outside of traditional government institutions. Motivated by the question of whether social capital can be rebuilt within bureaucratic structures, the research evaluates the role of alternative, agile models such as local volunteer organizations, mutual aid networks, third spaces, and NGOs. Using a comparative case study approach and qualitative analysis, I examine initiatives across different cultures that foster social trust and connection beyond the limitations of formal systems. The findings illustrate that adaptive models of social capital that are not based …

Synthetic Statocracy - Pakistan’S Self-Created Inferno: Examining The Causes And Consequences Of Military Dominance In Pakistan, Umer Lakhani

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the history of military rule in Pakistan. Applying the framework of Johannes Gerschewski in The Three Pillars of Stability: Legitimation, Repression and Co-Optation in Autocratic Regimes, this paper looks to explain how military rulers who presided over the three periods of military rule in Pakistan consolidated and maintained their power, as well as the effects that these periods of rule had on Pakistani society. This paper will also supplement Gerschewski’s general framework by applying the findings of various established authors who have been published extensively on Pakistan’s political history, economy and relationship with the military. Such authors …

Political Cults On College Campuses: How Universities Designed To Challenge Totalitarian Thinking May Now Enable It, Ellie Lerner

CMC Senior Theses

Cults are typically associated with fringe religious or spiritual movements rather than political causes. Yet as American politics increasingly supplants religion as a central source of identity and belonging, our political culture has taken on more cult-like characteristics. This thesis develops a framework for identifying political cults by synthesizing scholarly work on ideological totalism, psychological manipulation, and group dynamics. It then applies this framework to assess the rise of anti-Israel protests on U.S. college campuses in the wake of the October 7th terrorist attack. While this thesis finds that this movement should not be classified as a political cult outright, …

The Silent Cycle Of Violence: The Consequences Of Forced Return Migration And Strategies For Sustainable Reintegration, Guadalupe Loza-Mendez

CMC Senior Theses

The consequences of weaponizing deportations reshape human security in countries receiving high levels of forcibly returned migrants. Through a comparative case study, this thesis examines how different forms of organized crime — cartels in México and gangs in El Salvador — interact with and capitalize on returnee populations. While the origins and manifestations of organized crime differ between México and El Salvador, both demonstrate clear linkages between forced return migration from destination countries and declining human security in countries of origin through three key mechanisms: imported criminal structures, targeted recruitment of vulnerable returnees, and trickle-down effects on local communities.

Many …

How To Catch A Con: The Rhetorical Strategies Of Fraudulent Political Leaders, Lukas Huntington

CMC Senior Theses

The United States faces persistent challenges in controlling political fraud. Government agencies exhibit the second-highest fraud rate of any industry, and corruption levels have only worsened over the last decade, contributing to declining public trust in national leadership. Current fraud detection efforts generally catch late-stage, large-scale fraud, highlighting the need for earlier-detection mechanisms. One way this could be accomplished involves identifying rhetorical patterns that are commonly used by political frauds in order to flag high-risk individuals. Leaning on the Theory of Planned Behavior, it was hypothesized that political frauds would exhibit more rhetorical appeals to fear, blame, pathos, and self-promotion …

The Danger Of Deepfakes: Information Pollution And Epistemic Insecurity, Camille Doherty

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the dangers of deepfakes to democratic stability, emphasizing their capacity to pollute our information ecosystem and undermine trust in media. Beyond the immediate political harms from deepfake incidents, deepfakes are troubling for their impact on our collective relationship to media, truth, and one another. As exposure to deepfakes becomes more common, discerning fact from fiction will become increasingly difficult. Over time, this could foster widespread skepticism of all media and, worse, apathy toward truth itself. With eroded trust and shared truths, democracies risk losing epistemic security – the foundation for informed deliberation, decision-making, and accountability in democratic …