Political Science Commons^™

The Effects Of Suicide Terrorism In Afghanistan And Iraq On Us Policy And Military Strategy, Michelle Whalen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The international political landscape of the 21st century is strewn with terrorist groups that choose to act violently in order for their political messages to be heard. Around the world groups have been formed to defend their ideologies and fulfill their political agendas through acts of terrorism. The Baader-Meinhof Gang [also known as the Red Army Faction], the Weather Underground, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Hezbollah, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, HAMAS, and the Irish Republican Army have existed for many decades. They represent only a small handful of terrorist groups that have kidnapped, targeted public institutions with …

Putting Ideas To Work: A Practical Introduction To Political Thought (Book Review), Steven Michels

Political Science & Global Affairs Faculty Publications

Book review by Steven Michels.

Mattern, M. (2006). Putting ideas to work: A practical introduction to political thought. Rowman and Littlefield.

ISBN 9780742548893 (hardcover); 9780742548909 (pbk.)

Perception And Reality In Congressional Earmarks, Michael H. Crespin, Charles J. Finocchiaro, Emily O. Wanless

Faculty Publications

Earmarks added to appropriations bills have generated a considerable amount of attention from the media, politicians, and fiscal watchdog groups. Taken as a whole, three 'truths' about earmarks are frequently discussed: 1) earmarks are the reason for large budget deficits, 2) using omnibus legislation instead of regular order leads to more earmarks, and 3) 'airdropped' earmarks added at the conference stage compound the problem of pork. In this paper, we examine these 'truths' and find the conventional wisdom does not stand up to empirical tests. Finally, we show how Congress easily worked around new rules concerning the addition of earmarks …

The Eternal Flame: Politics Of The Olympic Games, Alyssa Gunstrom

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The purpose of this study is to analyze the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) host city site selection process. The recent Beijing Olympics brought to the surface the political implications of the host city selection. Have the past IOC site selections been politically influenced? What factors do the IOC members consider to make their decision? I use data provided by Paul Poast from the University of Michigan that includes data from every Olympic candidate city since the 1960 Roman Games. Some of the variables analyzed include: European and North American Bias, Bribes, GDP and GDP Growth. Using both quantitative and qualitative …

Nepa And The Dynamics Of Public Participation In The Environmental Review Process: An Analysis Of The Northmet (Polymet) Mining Project Near Hoyt Lakes Minnesota, Amber Neumann

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Hypothesis: That comments collected from agency “experts” during the scoping phase of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process would be disproportionately represented as changes in subsequent drafts of NorthMet’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

Methods: Tabular analysis of data collected from the Minnesota DNR publication of Response to the Public Scoping Projects PolyMet Mining Inc.; NorthMet Project. 2005

Results: There is an excellent cross section of comment sources represented in changes to subsequent drafts of NorthMet’s EIS. A lot of overlap exists between various types of participants and their concerns, resulting in many of the successful comments stemming from …

Framing The Challenges Of Political Empowerment And Engagement: Ideational Interventions For Democratization Since 2005, Benjamin T. Tolosa Jr

Political Science Department Faculty Publications

This essay explores the possibilities of igniting transformative political action among the youth through the creative exercise of giving meaning to their involvement. At a time when the youth are thought to have fallen to apathy, the author offers a way to effectively invite them to engagement. By showing them how their active citizenship is part of the broader action of building genuine democracy, the youth can truly become a force of hope for the country.

Lack Of A Will Or Of A Way? Taking A Capability Approach For Analysing Disability Policy Shortcomings And Ensuring Programme Impact In Afghanistan, Jean-Francois Trani, Parul Bakhshi, Ayan A. Noor, Ashraf Mashkoor

Brown School Faculty Publications

The present paper attempts to analyse some of the shortcomings that have impeded efforts in the field of disability in Afghanistan. After an overview of recent disability initiatives, this article presents elements that have contributed to the limited impact. The context of a Conflict Affected Fragile State (CAFS) makes particularly intricate the development of state-capacity as well as the delivery of basic services for the population. To overcome identified gaps, it is argued that Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach (CA) constitutes a relevant framework for designing disability policy and implementation. While the definition of human development has evolved considerably over the …

The Dueling First Amendments: Government As Funder, As Speaker, And The Establishment Clause, Carol Nackenoff

Political Science Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Politic 2009 Winter, The Politic, Inc.

The Politic

No abstract provided.

Why We Failed: The Rise Of Islamic Extremism And America’S Failure To Stop It 1979-2003, Brad Michael Negulescu

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the rise of Islamic terrorism from 1979-2003. It begins with how the Soviet-Afghan war during the 1980’s gave birth to a movement of young Islamic radicals that became known as al Qaeda. The paper then discusses how the organization, led by wealthy Saudi financier Osama bin Ladin, became a principle antagonist of the Clinton Administration throughout the 1990’s. Moreover, it goes on to talk about the numerous successful terrorist acts al Qaeda was able to plan and implement around the world during the 1990’s and how the administration attempted to deal them. It also discusses how the …

Religion, Rhetoric, And Running For Office: Public Reason On The Us Campaign Trail, Brian Stiltner, Steven Michels

Political Science & Global Affairs Faculty Publications

It is common, almost expected, for candidates for office in the United States to affirm their religious identity and to employ broad religious themes in support of their political agendas. It is the rare candidate, especially for the Senate or the presidency, who completely eschews religious language due to the pressure and scrutiny of church leaders and advocacy groups with religous and moral agendas.

Public Opinion And The Katrina Disaster: Linking Support For Rebuilding And Perceptions Of Flood Victims In New Orleans, Vincenzo Pasquantonio

LSU Master's Theses

Public support for government assistance to the needy has long been the focus of scholarly attention. Some assert that the perceived race of recipients of such aid is the primary determinant influencing such support. Others cite that it is the degree of trust one has in government institutions while still others cite American notions of individualism and self-reliance versus collective responsibility. The present study analyzes public opinion regarding aid to the City of New Orleans and its inhabitants following Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of the city. Several important findings emerge from this analysis. First, it cannot be demonstrated …

Boxing With Shadows: Contentious Politics, Culture Jamming, And Radical Creativity In Tactical Innovation, David Matthew Iles, Iii

LSU Master's Theses

Dominant theories of tactical innovation in contentious politics suggest that actors innovate in times of crisis or at the margins of familiar forms of action in order to achieve strategic advantage. I argue that these theories do not satisfactorily account for the tactical creativity of a form of contention called culture jamming. Instead, I employ a biographical theory of tactical innovation to explain their distinct repertoire of contention. This theory claims that tactics are partially explained as emanations of or congruent with the life experiences, identities, dispositions, and values of actors. Bourdieu’s field theory allows me to identify a social …

Wendell Berry And The Politics Of Homecoming: Place, Memory And Time In Jayber Crow, Drew Kennedy Thompson

LSU Master's Theses

This study examines the “politics of homecoming” appearing in author Wendell Berry’s novel Jayber Crow. The novel portrays the community of a small rural town, as narrated through the autobiography of its bachelor barber. The life-story of Jayber Crow is a journey of homecoming, progressing through three stages of nativity, estrangement, and restoration. These phases correspond and interact with philosophical motifs that can be traced throughout Berry’s corpus, but reaching their fullest expression in Jayber Crow. “Place” is the first motif, and facilitates a discussion of Berry’s contemporary agrarian vision of community. “Memory,” the second motif, becomes effective during the …

Public Opinion And Policy Liberalism In Louisiana: Does Political Trust Have An Effect?, Susan Quinn Lemieux

LSU Master's Theses

Representative democracy is based on the principle that government should be responsive to citizen wishes; thus government policy should reflect those wishes. Research on public opinion supports this (Erikson, Wright, and McIver 1987). While many scholars agree that public opinion affects policy outcomes, they disagree as to which aspect of public opinion policy outcomes emerge. Hetherington (2005) argues political trust explains policy liberalism. Using national-level data he demonstrates that decreased support for progressive policy results from decreased trust in government. Moreover, he finds that trust affects support for spending only when individuals are asked to sacrifice their self-interests and when …

Review Of American Dreamers: What Dreams Tell Us About The Political Psychology Of Conservatives, Liberals, And Everyone Else By Kelly Bulkeley, John R. Hibbing

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

American Dreamers is intended for a popular audience. Therefore it is unfair to criticize it for not being something it was never meant to be. Still, readers should know that it is written in a breezy style. It presents pleasant, rambling, impressionistic accounts of selected individual dreams rather than crisp, systematic analyses of broadly meaningful patterns. Thankfully, we are spared the discredited Freudian interpretations that easily could suffuse such a book. Unfortunately, in their place we find a set of cloying, new-age interpretations that frequently seem forced. For example, one journalist’s dream of being a drop of water is seen …

The Personal And The Political: Forgiveness And Reconciliation In Restorative Justice, Ari Kohen

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

At the center of this paper are three questions: in the absence of a religious worldview, can one gain access to the concepts of forgiveness and reconciliation, can reconciliation be achieved in the absence of forgiveness or does the former depend in some way upon the latter, and can we make sense of a restorative approach to justice in the absence of either forgiveness or reconciliation? To answer these questions, I look closely at the concept of forgiveness in the first section of this article with the goals of disentangling it from its religious undertones and emphasizing its importance to …

American Revolution, Ari Kohen, Sara W. Lunsford

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

When thinking about the American Revolution, one is soon confronted by the puzzle of precisely which revolution is up for discussion. As many scholars of American political thought have noted, one can make a strong case for two revolutionary moments in the founding days of the American republic: the declared separation from Britain in 1776 and the 1789 constitutional revolution. While both of these distinctive moments profoundly influenced the way people think about rights, this essay will focus on the initial revolutionary statement, the American Declaration of Independence. Doing so will enable us to examine closely both the immediate and …

[Introduction To] Church, State And Citizen: Christian Approaches To Political Engagement, Sandra F. Joireman

Bookshelf

In Church, State, and Citizen, Sandra F. Joireman has gathered political scientists to examine the relationship between religion and politics as seen from within seven Christian traditions: Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, Anglican, Evangelical and Pentecostal. In each chapter the historical and theological foundations of the tradition are described along with the beliefs regarding the appropriate role of the state and citizen. While all Christian traditions share certain beliefs about faith (e.g. human sin, salvation, Christ's atonement) and political life (e.g. limited government, human rights, the incompleteness and partiality of all political action) there are also profound differences. The authors …

[Introduction To] Medicating Children: Adhd And Pediatric Mental Health, Rick Mayes, Catherine Bagwell, Jennifer L. Erkulwater

Bookshelf

Why and how did ADHD become the most commonly diagnosed mental disorder among children and adolescents, as well as one of the most controversial? Stimulant medication had been used to treat excessively hyperactive children since the 1950s. And the behaviors that today might lead to an ADHD diagnosis had been observed since the early 1930s as “organic drivenness,” and then by various other names throughout the decades.

The authors argue that a unique alignment of social and economic trends and incentives converged in the early 1990s with greater scientific knowledge to make ADHD the most prevalent pediatric mental disorder. New …

Traditions Of Philanthropic Order, Christine Dunn Henderson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Individuals act more or less simultaneously as economic agents, citizens, and participants in civil society. Their interactions and their ways of fulfilling these roles take many forms. Not all of them can be said to be self-organizing, yet in several instances patterns of organization emerge spontaneously without being deliberately designed. Of course, the market economy—or “catallaxy,” as F. A. Hayek called it—remains the best example of such “spontaneous orders.” But there are others. Gus diZerega (2000), for example, has identified science and democracy as being similarly constituted by self-referential, self-organizing (some authors prefer the term autopoietic) processes. In this paper …

Trade Unions And Green Jobs In The Post-Fordist Economy: Just Rhetoric Or A Fundamental Shift?, Erik Kojola

Honors Papers

This paper looks at green jobs within the context of the new economy and post-Fordism, with a focus on why unions are supporting green jobs and the potential for creating decent employment and unionized jobs in green industries. The simultaneous economic and environmental crises create a window for political and economic change. The direction of green jobs will be determined by larger economic and political trends and will depend on the action of the state and organized labor. Unions are supporting green jobs because it is a way to promote reindustrialization, an active government industrial policy, corporatism and social partnerships. …

Double-Edged Sword: Russia’S Use Of Energy As Leverage In The Near Abroad, Alexander M. Visotzky

Honors Papers

This work explores Russia’s use of energy as leverage in the near abroad. This work argues that different strategies of using energy, such as moderation or aggression, lead to different outcomes in the near abroad. The current work on Russian foreign policy fails to provide an explanation for the wildly different outcomes of Georgia and Ukraine – this work seeks to fill in those gaps.

On The Edge Of The Law: Women’S Property Rights And Dispute Resolution In Kisii, Kenya, Sandra F. Joireman, Elin Henrysson

Political Science Faculty Publications

Scholars have argued that economic efficiency requires a clear definition of the rights of ownership, contract, and transfer of land. Ambiguity in the definition or enforcement of any of these rights leads to an increase in transaction costs in the exchange and transfer of land as well as a residual uncertainty after any land contract. In Kenya, government efforts at establishing clearly defined property rights and adjudication mechanisms have been plagued by the existence of alternative processes for the adjudication of disputes. Customary dispute resolution has been praised as an inexpensive alternative to official judicial processes in a legally pluralistic …

Viable Institutions, Judicial Power, And Post-Communist Constitutional Courts, Kirill Mikhaylovich Bumin

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

In pursuing their goals, newly-created constitutional courts of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics are affected by their institutional setting and capabilities. Yet, previous studies did not explore how constitutional courts develop over time and what noteworthy implications for politics and society result from their institutional growth. To address this gap in the literature, I measured a variety of organizational characteristics and constructed an index of institutional development for the twenty eight constitutional courts in the post-communist countries from the initial year of their transitions through 2005. I argued that high values on this measure (which I labeled the …

Machiavellian Heroes Through The Prism Of Aristotle, Robert Acosta

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Thesis examines the relationship between the political philosophies of Machiavelli and Aristotle. It hypothesizes that Machiavelli incorporates three fundamental premises of Aristotle's political philosophy: 1. Politics is the master science 2. Man is a political animal 3. Aristotle's conception of human nature. In order to test the hypoThesis the Thesis utilizes case studies in the form of Machiavelli's four excellent men (Theseus, Romulus, Cyrus, and Moses) that are named explicitly in Chapter VI of The Prince . It is concluded that there is an element of Aristotle's fundamental political philosophy that is incorporated by Machiavelli. This relationship is often …

The Declining Significance Of Presidential Races?, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Osamudia R. James

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Curious Case Of Jim Mcgreevey, Justin Eckstein

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This project examines the apologetic discourse surrounding James Edward "Jim" McGreevey's August 12, 2004 resignation as governor of New Jersey. A cursory reading of the allegations McGreevey faced reveals a curious incongruity between the initial accusations of corruption and his apologizing for being homosexual. In short, McGreevey stood accused of corruption for a number of terrible cabinet appointments. Yet, he apologized for being gay and having a "consensual" affair with his former director of Homeland Security, Golan Cipel. Through a close reading of the texts, I decipher how McGreevey's apology modified the public's understanding of the events that lead to …

Paradigmatic Recrudescence: Classical Realism In The Age Of Globalization, Nerses Kopalyan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The paradigm of classical realism has been the subject of extensive debate in the study of international relations. Its axiomatic suppositions, conceptual structures, theoretical framework, and analytical scope have made realism the subject of both genuine veneration and intense scrutiny at the hands of international relations scholars. This has had a three-fold effect on the evolvement of the paradigm: realism has been methodically revised by neorealists; realism has become a tool of analysis for revisionist non-realists; and realism has been marginalized and erroneously critiqued. The objective of this thesis is to demonstrate and prove the following four points. First, to …

Trust In The Balance: Asymmetric Information, Commitment Problems And Balancing Behavior, Zachary Shirkey, Ivan Savic

Publications and Research

Realists argue that balancing occurs in response to changes to the balance of power. Recent informational approaches have focused primarily on informational asymmetries or commitment problems. The paper combines these two approaches and builds on them by incorporating characteristics of the revisionist state and the potential balancer, as well as the specific challenge to the balance of power. The model confirms that informational asymmetries often lead to commitment problems and that they are a necessary condition for balancing. However, whether or not informational asymmetries create commitment problems depends on both the nature of the challenger’s move and the relative power …