Political Science Commons^™

The Coevolution Of Networks And Political Attitudes, David Lazer, Brian Rubineau, Carol Chetkovich, Nancy Katz, Michael Neblo

Working Papers

How do attitudes and social affiliations co-evolve? A long stream of research has focused on the relationship between attitudes and social affiliations. However, in most of this research the causal relationship between views and affiliations is difficult to discern definitively: Do people influence each other’s views so that they converge over time or do they primarily affiliate (by choice or happenstance) with those of similar views? Here we use longitudinal attitudinal and whole network data collected at critical times (notably, at the inception of the system) to identify robustly the determinants of attitudes and affiliations. We find significant conformity tendencies: …

The Effect Of Presidential Campaigning: The 2002 And 2004 Midterm Senate Elections, Scott D. Mcclurg, Jessica Bryan

Working Papers

Many scholars address the indirect effects presidents have on midterm election results by examining the “midterm loss” phenomenon, presidential coattails, negative voting, and the “referendum” thesis. However, very little research investigates the direct effect that presidential campaigning has on congressional candidates prospects for victory. This study adds to this growing literature by exploring presidential campaigning in the 2002 and 2006 U.S. Senate midterm elections. Our investigation makes two important contributions to previous research. First, we explicitly model the strategic decisions presidents make in visiting states in order to get a better estimate of presidential impact that accounts for selection bias. …

Hungary, Slovakia, And Romania: International Relations Examined Through Minority Language Education, Julianna Connelly Stockton

Mathematics Faculty Publications

The Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia are not just ethnic minorities but also linguistic minorities whose language has almost no linguistic similarity to their host nations’ language. One aspect of life in which linguistic minority issues arise most frequently is that of education. Should minority linguistic groups be forced to learn the national language in order to attend school or participate in official functions or should the government provide or allow for education in their native language?

The ethnic Hungarian minorities did not, for the most part, emigrate from Hungary to these other countries by choice the way most immigrants …

God-Talk In The Age Of Obama: Theology And Religious Political Engagement, Charlton C. Copeland

Articles

No abstract provided.

Eastphalia Rising?: Asian Influence And The Fate Of Human Security, David P. Fidler, Sung Won Kim, Sumit Ganguly

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Empowerment-Based Advocacy Conducted By Not-For-Profit Organizations, Margery C. Saunders

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This study explores the advocacy patterns of over 200 nonprofit human service providers active in both anti-violence and anti-poverty service arenas. A mailed survey to organizations associated with three statewide advocacy organizations in New York State examined the organizational factors associated with three advocacy activities: case advocacy, public policy education, and legislative issue advocacy. Using empowerment theory, predictors that captured the degree of ethnic diversity of an organization's staff and board, and whether or not consumers served on the staff or board, and whether having social workers as advocates were examined along with other control variables to explain the conditions …

Party System Stability In Latin America : A Comparative Study, Luis F. Clemente

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

It has been argued that party systems should always be on "working order" because stable party systems correlate with stable democracies, and whenever party systems become dysfunctional, democracy becomes dysfunctional as well. In Latin America, there is legitimate concern for party system stability precisely because of such outcome. Political parties in the region not only face internal and external challenges, but also the added pressure of being part of democratic consolidation. Most importantly, Latin American politics currently present a great challenge: how to restore citizen trust in political parties and party systems.

The Politics And Economics Of Software Intellectual Property Rights : Interacting Policies Of The United States, United Kingdom, Romania, Turkey, And International Organizations, Ersan Ozkan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The Intellectual Property Rights is one of the key issues of the global economy as knowledge has become a key element in international trade. As the process of digitalization spreads, Software Intellectual Property Rights (SIPR) have become essential to the development of computer software industry. However, some developing governments do not fulfill the requirements of protecting SIPR; as a result, western entrepreneurs lose huge amounts of money. In order to prevent losses, developed countries established various organizations to watch and guide developing countries on SIPR issue.

Parliamentary Independence In Uganda And Kenya 1962--2008, John Kendall Johnson Jr

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This comparative case study examines the independence of the Uganda and Kenya parliaments from the time of their independence from the U.K. in the early 1960s, until 2008, focusing especially on the past 12 years. Beginning in the mid-late 1990s, these East African legislatures became two of the most independent in Africa, censuring ministers, developing effective committees, amending legislation, and enacting private member bills that significantly enhanced their power relative to that of their executive branches. Following the enactment of these private member bills, the two parliaments gained control over their budgets and staffs, expanded their campuses, and began playing …

Federalism, Intergovernmental Relations And Implementation : A Broad Examination Of The Politics Of Medicaid Disenrollment, Kathleen Marie Dalton

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Variation in the Medicaid program has frequently been studied across states, and considered a product of political, fiscal and administrative factors. Few studies have considered variation in Medicaid as a product of federal bureaucratic behavior. This study examines federal variation, and uses federalism, intergovernmental relations and public policy lenses to compare two cases where classes of recipients were being disenrolled from Medicaid, in apparent conflict with federal regulations. In one case, when individuals moved from county-to-county and became disenrolled in Medicaid, the federal bureaucrats used most of the implementation tools at their disposal to try to bring states back into …

Change And Continuity In Mexico's Immigration Policy : How Civil Society Organizations Influence The Policy Process, Laura Valeria Gonzalez-Murphy

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN MEXICO'S IMMIGRATION POLICY: HOW CIVIL SOCIETY INFLUENCES THE POLICY PROCESS

The Practice Of Ideology : A Theory Of Ideology And Conceptual Analysis Of Irish Republicanism, Robert Marcello Mauro

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The thesis of this dissertation is that ideology is an ontologically autonomous social object that social science can reconstruct accurately only if it treats ideology as ontologically autonomous. To demonstrate this thesis, the text has three mutually supporting aims. First, it seeks to further our understanding of ideology as a form of political thought, and to develop an appropriate theory of ideology. Second, it critiques the academic literature on Irish Republicanism and, when necessary, the academic literature on Northern Irish political thought. Third, it is a conceptual morphology of Irish Republicanism. Through an examination of Irish Republicanism, the dissertation shows …

Varieties Of Marketization In China : The Impact Of Private Entrepreneurs, Local Governments, And State-Owned Enterprises, Ji-Yong Lee

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The dissertation examines roles and effects of local government and private entrepreneurial class focusing on three localities in China in the course of marketization, based on the assumption that, at the local level in post-Maoist China, transitional paths toward a market-based economy from the planned economy are significantly affected by leading actors such as local governments, private entrepreneurs, or state-owned enterprises; economic development and formation of vibrant local market economy tend to be strongest when led by private entrepreneurs and weakest when led by state-owned enterprises. It especially focuses on formation of private entrepreneurial class and its roles in constructing …

Can Resource Mobilization Predict The Level Of Success Among Social Movement Organizations?, Kathryn Brannan, '09

Honors Projects

This paper is a series of case studies of social movement organizations within the AIDS Awareness Movement of the 1980s. By examining ACT UP, the Names Project, and Gay Men's Health Crisis, we see that resource mobilization theory can help explain varying levels of success among SMOs that worked in the same context and within the same subculture. Internal organization, networking, innovation and the use of violence are all strategies which are found to be insignificant in explaining the success of each SMO. This paper shows the predictive ability of resource mobilization theory. It closes with suggestions for future work, …

Presidential Success In Congress: Factors That Determine The President's Ability To Influcence Congressional Voting, Christine Gibbs, '09

Honors Projects

This study examines the factors that contribute to presidential success in Congress. Results show that, overall, presidential popularity, the president's party's margin of control in Congress and the misery index positively and significantly affect presidential success in Congress, whereas party unity, presidential effort and saliency are, overall, not significant determinants of success. The study also demonstrates that the honeymoon period does not increase a president's success rate. The results indicate that these variables interact differently within foreign policy than domestic policy and in the Senate than the House.

Trust On The Internet: A Virtual Reality?, Adam Clark, '09

Honors Projects

Social capital has recently gained popularity, but it is not a new topic. The relationship between civic engagement and trust has been well tested, and it has been used in the past to help diagnose the well being of a society. Unfortunately with evolving technology, some of this research may be now obsolete. The Internet has changed the way that people communicate and learn. Since the Internet has reached such high proliferation rates, especially among the younger generations, it is likely to have an effect on the relationship between civic engagement and trust. Using NES survey data from 1996 to …

Performance Management Recommendations For The New Administration, Shelley H. Metzenbaum

Edward J. Collins Center for Public Management Publications

Two simple tools—goals and measurement—are among the most powerful leadership mechanisms available to a President for influencing the vast scope of federal agencies. Goals and measurement are useless, however, unless used. They must be used not just to comply with mandated reporting requirements, but to communicate priorities and problems, to motivate through attention and feedback, and to illuminate where, when, and why performance changes. The President and his leadership team must focus their discussions to deliver results around specific goals and discuss progress and problems relative to them. Otherwise, the goals agencies articulate in written plans are likely to be …

Presidential Staffing And Public Opinion: How Public Opinion Influences Politicization, José Villalobos, Justin Vaughn

Departmental Papers (PS)

Scholars traditionally frame presidential efforts to politicize the federal bureaucracy as the result of divergence between the president's preferences and an agency's output. The authors argue that presidential concern with agency output is dynamic and is in part conditioned by the president's relationship with the public. To assess the relationship between politicization and public opinion, the authors use a data set that combines information on presidential efforts to politicize the Council of Economic Advisers from 1989 to 2004 with that of public attitudes concerning the president's handling of the economy. Their results indicate that public opinion does indeed bear a …

How The Dissent Becomes The Majority: Using Federalism To Transform Coalitions In The U.S. Supreme Court, Tonja Jacobi, Vanessa A. Baird

Faculty Articles

This Article proposes that dissenting Supreme Court Justices provide cues in their written opinions about how future litigants can reframe case facts and legal arguments in similar future cases to garner majority support. Questions of federal-state power cut across most other substantive legal issues, and this can provide a mechanism for splitting existing majorities in future cases. By signaling to future litigants when this potential exists, dissenting judges can transform a dissent into a majority in similar future cases.

We undertake an empirical investigation of dissenting opinions in which the dissenting Justice suggests that future cases ought to be framed …

Ideology And Exceptionalism In Intellectual Property: An Empirical Study, Matthew Sag, Tonja Jacobi, Maxim Sytch

Faculty Articles

In this Article, we examine the effect of judicial ideology on IP case outcomes before the Supreme Court from 1954 to 2006. We find that ideology is a significant determinant of IP cases: the more conservative a justice is, the more likely he or she is to vote in favor of recognizing and enforcing rights to intellectual property. We also find evidence that the relationship is more complex than a purely ideological account would suggest; our results suggest that law matters too. We find that a number of factors that are specific to IP are also consequential. Additionally, we show …

Viewpoint Diversity And Media Consolidation: An Empirical Study, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn

Faculty Articles

One of the central predicates of legal regulation of media ownership is that ownership consolidation reduces substantive viewpoint diversity. Appellate courts and, in turn, the Federal Communications Commission have increasingly demanded evidence for this convergence hypothesis, but extant empirical measures of viewpoint diversity sidestep the problem, ignoring diversity, viewpoints, or both. Our Article develops and offers a finely tuned, time-varying statistical measure of editorial viewpoint diversity, based on a new database of over 1600 editorial positions in twenty-five top newspapers from 1988-2004. Using this new measure, we assess the validity of the convergence hypothesis by examining the evolution of editorial …

Money, Politics, And Impartial Justice, Joanna Shepherd

Faculty Articles

A centuries-old controversy asks whether judicial elections are inconsistent with impartial justice. The debate is especially important because more than 90 percent of the United States’ judicial business is handled by state courts, and approximately nine in ten of all state court judges face the voters in some type of election. Using a stunning new data set of virtually all state supreme court decisions from 1995 to 1998, this paper provides empirical evidence that elected state supreme court judges routinely adjust their rulings to attract votes and campaign money. I find that judges who must be reelected by Republican voters, …

Are Appointed Judges Strategic Too?, Joanna Shepherd

Faculty Articles

The conventional wisdom among many legal scholars is that judicial independence can best be achieved with an appointive judiciary; judicial elections turn judges into politicians, threatening judicial autonomy. Yet the original supporters of judicial elections successfully eliminated the appointive systems of many states by arguing that judges who owed their jobs to politicians could never be truly independent. Because the judiciary could function as a check and balance on the other governmental branches only if it truly were independent of them, the reformers reasoned that only popular elections could ensure a truly independent judiciary. Using a data set of virtually …

Competing Models Of Judicial Coalition Formation And Case Outcome Determination, Tonja Jacobi

Faculty Articles

Forming a coalition on a multi-judge panel involves an inherent trade-off between coalition maximization and ideological outcome optimization. Much scholarship is premised on assumptions about how judges make that trade-off; these assumptions have consequences for how we view and measure judicial decision-making. Specifying these assumptions, formally modeling their effects, and basing measures of judicial behavior on these results offer the potential to improve analysis of judicial decision-making.

This article formally explores three commonly posited modes of judicial decision-making: a minimum winning coalition model, representing attitudinalist views of judicial decision-making; a maximum winning coalition, capturing the effect of norms of joint …

Democratic Institutions Create Civic Health: How Local Jurisdictions Can Enhance Their Problem-Solving Capacities Through Inclusive Governance, Including A Case Study Of Newark, Delaware, Ezra Temko

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Civic health is a community’s economic, civic, and social infrastructure – its capacity to solve its problems. This paper explores how contemporary local governments address the opportunities and challenges facing their communities and how local governments could utilize civic engagement to enhance civic health. It also evaluates the status of Newark, Delaware’s civic health and offers pragmatic steps Newark’s government can take to enhance the community’s civic health. Democratic governance is the 21st century engine for communities like Newark, Delaware to enhance their civic health. Collaborative and inclusive governance can improve a community’s abilities to solve problems. The Newark community …

An Uncertain Place In Uncertain Times: The South Caucasus, Nathan Burns

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to address how geopolitical factors influence the foreign policies of states in the South Caucasus. Due to the recent Russia-Georgia War, this region is central to contemporary foreign policy, fueling discussions of a New Cold War between the US and Russia. With the explicit goal to provide policy relevant research on this critical region, the South Caucasus states (Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia) are examined in three separate case studies. Utilizing qualitative analysis of historical event data, each case examines the role of five different variables: energy resources, routes, demography, proximity, and state leadership. That …

Achievement Gaps Throughout The Education Pipeline: Tracking The Trends Before And After The Florida Education Governance Reorganization Act Of 2000, Rachel Emas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To assess the effectiveness of the Florida Education Governance Reorganization Act of 2000, I analyze the achievement gaps across different levels of the education pipeline: elementary, secondary, and postsecondary. This paper evaluates three objectives of Florida's new system: strengthening of foundation skills, improvement of college and career readiness, and the expansion of opportunities for postsecondary degrees, by asking: Has the introduction of a PreK-20 seamless system in Florida reduced the educational achievement gaps between students, compared to Texas, which has not instituted a seamless system? At the elementary level, the analysis looks at 4th and 8th grade National Assessment of …

Privacy, Surveillance And The State: A Comparison Of U.S. And British Privacy Rights, Angelina Lander

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the effects of institutional structure on the privacy rights regimes in the United States and the United Kingdom, from 2000-2006. The goal of this research is to analyze how variation in the institutional arrangements across these two countries allowed for more or less protection of privacy rights for citizens. Domestic terrorist attacks during the time period represent a catalyst for changes in police and government surveillance activities. Veto points literature provides the framework for institutional comparison. The first part of the research provides a discussion of the historical evolution of privacy rights in both states, focusing on …

The Clash Of Thoughts Within The Arab Discourse, Chadia Louai

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Clash of Civilization thesis by Samuel Huntington and the claims of other scholars such as Bernard Lewis reinforced the impression in the West that the Arab world is a homogeneous and rigid entity ready to clash with other civilizations. In fact, some in the West argue that world civilizations have religious characteristics, for that reason the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will be primarily cultural and religious. However, other scholars argue that there is no single Islamic culture but rather multiple types of political Islam and different perception of it. Therefore, the monolithic aspect of Islam …

The Bay Of Pigs Invasion: A Case Study In Foreign Policy Decision-Making, Amaury Murgado

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Policy makers have long recognized the importance of considering past experience, history, and the use of Analogical reasoning when making policy decisions. When elite political actors face foreign policy crises, they often use their past experience, refer to history, and use Analogical reasoning to help them frame their decisions. In the case of the ill-fated invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, the use of Analogical reasoning revolving around past covert successes may have created an environment for faulty foreign policy decision-making. Former members of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) filled the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency …