Political Science Commons^™

Who Governs The Internet? The Emerging Policies, Institutions, And Governance Of Cyberspace, Robert J. Domanski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There remains a widespread perception among both the public and elements of academia that the Internet is "ungovernable". However, this idea, as well as the notion that the Internet has become some type of cyber-libertarian utopia, is wholly inaccurate. Governments may certainly encounter tremendous difficulty in attempting to regulate the Internet, but numerous "architectures of control" have nevertheless become pervasive. So who, then, governs the Internet? Our contentions are that the Internet is, in fact, being governed; that it is being governed by specific and identifiable networks of policy actors; and that an argument can be made as to how …

The United States Of The World: Human Rights, Political Entrepreneurship, And U.S. Foreign Policy Via Affective And Rational Politics, Marriah Star

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines how Political Entrepreneurs in the United States Congress responded to human rights abuses in six countries during the 1970s and 1980s: Cambodia, El Salvador, South Africa, the Soviet Union, Taiwan, and Uganda. It presents a four-point model for approaching the study of United States human rights policy. The key element in all the cases is bonding social capital, also called affective politics. American policy towards the Soviet Union and Uganda both demonstrate the integration of international, transnational, and domestic politics. Taiwan receives special attention because U.S. Taiwan policy continues to exemplify the integration of international relations, transnational …

Doing Good By Doing Well? The Political Economy Of The Medical Biotechnology Industry In The United States, Volker Lehmann

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study is dedicated to the political economy of the medical biotechnology industry in the United States. The study combines interviews with more than 150 biotechnology actors with a historical analysis and evidence from publicly available data bases. The ascent of this new industry took place in the United States first and foremost, because there, scientific advancements coincided with the rise of supply-side economics, a policy shift that was part of a larger, neoliberal, ideological shift. Despite free-market rhetoric, specific clusters within the United States became the world's leading biotechnology clusters because of a history of targeted interventions to stimulate …

The Outsourcing Of National Defense, Christopher Weimar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The outsourcing of military activities and services has grown dramatically in recent decades. My objective is to understand and explain this phenomenon at work in the United States Department of Defense (DoD) using theoretical frameworks of strategic efficiency, political ideology and organizational theory factors. This study seeks to answer the question, why has the DOD outsourced support activities and functions that contribute to larger national security objectives and were traditionally performed by DoD personnel? I'll use a case-study methodology to examine outsourcing in the DoD between 1970 and 2005, to include an in-depth look at the information technology (IT) networks …

"I Harbor No Hate": A Study Of Political Tolerance And Intolerance In Holocaust Survivors, Nancy Isserman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The political attitudes of tolerance or intolerance of victims towards their former perpetrators have not been thoroughly researched prior to this study. Through the data collected by the Transcending Trauma Project, a study looking at three generations of Holocaust survivor families, " I Harbor No Hate: A Study of Tolerance and Intolerance in Holocaust Survivors " examined this question. One expects that survivors will until their dying days hate the Germans and the Poles who destroyed their families, their livelihoods, their homes, and their communities. Yet, to a significant group of survivors interviewed for the Transcending Trauma project, this response …

International Regime, Domestic Politics And Telecommunications Technology: Jamaica In The Information Age, Judith A. Duncker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In September of 1988, the government of Jamaica heralded its official entry into the information industry with the establishment of the US{dollar}2 million Jamaica Digiport International facility. The significance of this announcement was surpassed only by the state's decision to close the domestic telecommunications sector to competition as the global satellite regime and the global market embarked on its own course of liberalization. This decision spelt victory for one of two contending factions. On the one hand was Jamaica Promotions (Jampro), Jamaica's economic development agency, which attempted to liberalize the sector's use of satellite technology with the operation of the …

No Relief: The Politics Of Welfare Retrenchment, 1873-1898 And 1973-2002, Stephen Pimpare

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

No Relief compares the national repeal of AFDC in 1996 with the widespread campaigns against municipal poor relief that occurred throughout the United States some one hundred years earlier. In both eras businesses and the governments that depended upon them, threatened by growing labor power, civil unrest and the rising costs of poor relief, launched an attack against poor people and the limited benefits available to them. They did not do so directly but under cover of the Charity Organization Societies of the Gilded Age and conservative think tanks of the late twentieth century—"neutral" reform organizations that obscured the class-based …

The Politics Of Economic Integration In Latin America: A Case Study Of The Andean Group, 1969–1995, Julio J. Chan-Sanchez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines and confirms the hypothesis, through the study of the evolution of the Andean Group (a subregional economic integration unit in South America), that economic integration is a quasi-cyclical process involving phases of progress, stagnation, and decline. It is not a smooth linear progression. This quasi-cyclical evolution is fundamentally determined by the governments of the member countries. As such, the individual governments are the most important actors in setting the evolution of the economic integration process.

The integration process will progress when all the governments of the member countries find the Andean Group useful for attaining some of …

The Politics Of Memorialization: Creating A Holocaust Memorial Museum In New York City, Rochelle G. Saidel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study of how government intervention affects the implementation of a project of an interest group analyzes the political processes of the 45 year impasse in completing a major Holocaust memorial in New York City. Using as a case study the 1981-1991 effort to create such a project, the study develops a new concept for analyzing long-term public-private projects. This study develops and uses a so-called Mutagon to analyze the complicated and changing political coalition that has endeavored for ten years to create a Holocaust museum.

The Mutagon concept augments existing interest group theories, (e.g., iron triangle and issue network …

The Political Economy Of Populist-Nationalism In Argentina, 1943-55: Peronism As A Transitional Stage In The Development Of A Dependent Industrial Economy, Thomas M.H. Kappner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Focusing on the Peronist period from 1943 to 1955 as the high point of a transitional process between two patterns of dependency on foreign capital, the study explores the dynamics underlying the pendular cycle so characteristic of Latin American political life–the dialectical movement between some variant of populist rule and that based on military power as a means of repressing popular aspirations. Peronism emerged in the context of contradictions within a developmental pattern based on an alliance of the export producing, landowning oligarchy with foreign, primarily British, commercial and financial groups. The developmental model promoted by the Peron government in …

The State And Underdevelopment In Spanish America: The Political Roots Of Dependency In Peru And Argentina From The Conquest To 1895, Douglas Stuart Friedman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study challenges the dependency perspective claim that Spanish American countries developed agro/mineral export economies in the nineteenth century as a result of their integration into the capitalist international economy. It offers an alternative interpretation which argues that the process of State building and the response of the emergent Spanish American States to internal political class struggles were chiefly responsible for setting the direction of their economies as well as the degree and character of their integration into the international economy.

Rather than focusing on the effects of the international economy in explaining the roots of dependency and underdevelopment in …