Political Science Commons^™

On The Relationship Between Regime Approval And Democratic Transition, Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, Gregory A. Petrow

Political Science Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Democratic transition scholars find a large number of factors associated with the likelihood of non-democratic regimes transitioning to democracy. Of these, three factors appear to be among the most potent: economic development, economic crisis, and the type of non-democratic regime (e.g. Geddes 1999, Brownlee 2009). However, another type of factor may matter as well - public approval of the regime. The chief limitation that prevents scholars from addressing this factor is the absence of data. However, we have access to the largest repository of international public opinion data that is comparable for all nations - the Gallup World Poll. The …

The Us Veto Over Palestine's Un Membership, Timothy W. Waters

Articles by Maurer Faculty

While the United Nations is in debate over Palestinians’ request for UN membership, the US has already announced their decision to veto. But the over two thirds of Americans who are neither Jewish nor Evangelical should consider saying yes. It may not solve every problem but it could increase the prospects for successful negotiations between Palestine and Israel.

The War For Your Mind: Propaganda, Cultural Narratives, And The American Media, Caleb Baumgardner

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how the contemporary American media can and do function as a medium for propaganda at the behest of elite interests, such as the federal government and big business. It examines how the media often present stories in the context of cultural narratives that are deeply rooted in the American cultural consciousness, regardless of whether such a context is appropriate or even accurate, and that it does so in service to power. It examines how this practice employs Sophistic rhetorical techniques and contrasts them with a Platonic view of rhetoric. It will also demonstrate how this practice is …

The International Energy Agency In Global Energy Governance, Ann Florini

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is the organization that, despite its constrained membership, is as close as the world currently comes to a global focal point on the key energy governance arenas. Although when the IEA was established in the 1970s it had the specific and limited purpose of enabling the world's leading oil consumers to undertake collective action in response to oil supply shocks, it now finds itself at the center of many of the key developments in global energy governance. Its evolution and current challenges reflect the key themes of this special issue: the competition between state and …

Commentary: Crisis Is Danger Plus Opportunity, Ann Florini

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

John Clark has given us a great deal to be depressed about, in the story he tells about theroles of civil society in addressing the compelling threats of climate change and ecosystemcollapse. Fortunately, that account is incomplete. There is another half to the story, onethat provides a more hopeful picture. Indeed, a closer look at what is happening in thecivil society/environmental arena tells us much about humanity’s prospects for dealingwith climate change. It tells us even more about the rapidly evolving nature of civilsociety and humanity’s capacity for creative collective action. And from both perspectives,the glass, rather than being empty—or …

Mapping Global Energy Governance, Navroz K. Dubash, Ann Florini

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The challenges inherent in energy policy form an increasingly large proportion of the great issues of global governance. These energy challenges reflect numerous transnational market or governance failures, and their solutions are likely to require a number of global components that can support or constrain national energy policy. Governing energy globally requires approaches that can simultaneously cope with three realities: the highly fragmented and conflictual nature of the current inter-state system's efforts to govern energy; the diversity of institutions and actors relevant to energy; and the dominance of national processes of energy decision making that are not effectively integrated into …

Application Of An Agent-Based System As A Virtual Environment For The Formulation Of Policies, Araz Taeihagh, René Bañares-Alcántara, Moshe Givoni

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The growth in the interdependence and complexity of socio-economic systems requires the development of tools and techniques to aid us in the formulation of better policies. Our efforts focus towards developing methodologies and support tools for better policy design and formulation. In this paper, we focus on the development of an agent-based approach to create a virtual environment for the exploration and analysis of different configurations of policy measures in order to build policy packages and test the effects of changes and uncertainties while formulating policies. By developing systematic approaches for the formulation andanalysis of policies it is possible to …

Information Disclosure In Global Energy Governance, Ann Florini, Saleena Saleem

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The lack of global consensus on how to deal with complex energy governance challenges has led to the emergence of information disclosure initiatives as governance tools in and of themselves. This article assesses the effectiveness of disclosure mechanisms as tools of energy governance by looking at the motivations and desired outcomes behind a series of disclosure-based initiatives in the energy sector, namely: making energy markets work more efficiently; inducing corporations to internalize their climate change externalities; and improving democratic processes that lead to better energy governance outcomes. The disclosure initiatives assessed in this article adopt different strategies to achieve their …

Better Ways To Run The World, Ann Florini

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Wherever government ministers and international bureaucrats gather to debate and shape the global economy, hordes of protesters converge. And now some of the groups involved in the coordinated protests plan to diversify their targets to include multinational corporations. The protests themselves are merely the visible tip of a vast iceberg of transnational networks tying together people from all parts of the world who share grievances about the current rules governing global economic integration. Transnational civil society networks should not and will not end up making the rules themselves: the final decisions must rest with governments. But the protest movement has …

Introduction To The Special Issue: Governing Energy In A Fragmented World, Ann Florini, Navroz K. Dubash

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This special issue brings together leading experts from Asia, Europe and North America to examine the international institutions, national governance mechanisms and financing systems that together will determine the future of the energy sector. The enormous environmental externalities imposed by fossil fuel extraction and consumption, the devastating corruption and human rights abuses that have accompanied this energy system, and the geopolitical vulnerabilities that have arisen because of the uneven natural distribution of these resources, have occasioned enormous handwringing - but not, yet, a shift to a more rational system of providing energy services. Although national governments play the dominant role …

The Arab Spring: Endgames As Framing Battle, Colm Campbell

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The narrative of the Arab Spring (including the Syrian uprising) in the mainstream media appears clear and linear: a cruel dictator is challenged in a series of street demonstrations that rapidly coalesce to become a popular uprising. The dictator resorts to increasingly brutal repression, but this fails to end the challenge. Within a relatively short time the dictator is overthrown. Elections within a reasonable period are announced, promising the creation of a democracy that is representative not only of the protest movement, but of society as a whole. Raghida Dergham's Huffington Post article largely reflects this perspective, drawing attention to …

September Roundtable: "The Syrian Spring" And Human Rights, Introduction, Raslan Ibrahim

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The UN Security Council's Pro-Syrian 'Defiance Coalition' Crumbles”. By Raghida Dergham. Huffington Post, August 2011.

White Noise, White Heat, Therese O'Donnell

Human Rights & Human Welfare

If, as former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously uttered, "A week is a long time in politics," then the Six weeks since Raghida Dergham's article could be a lifetime and the last six months of the "Arab Spring" an aeon.

The Moral International Sphere As A New "Civic Virtue", Claudia Heiss

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Liberal political theory, the predominant paradigm at least since the 1970s, rules out as oppressive the imposition of any substantive notion of a "good way of life" and proposes instead a neutral conception where each individual should have the right to pursue his or her own preferred project of life. This opposition of an ancient "virtue" and a modern "freedom" seems challenged by current debates about morality and the responsibility to protect innocent civilians from massive crimes. The moral outrage of the international community may be interpreted as a signal of a perhaps minimal notion of civic virtue, which translates …

Presidents And The Rhetoric Of Recessions, Donna R. Hoffman, Alison D. Howard

Collected Faculty Scholarship

Are presidents reticent during recessions? Some research indicates that presidents make fewer major and minor speeches when economic conditions worsen (Ragsdale 1984; Eshbaugh-Soha 2010). We examine whether this holds true with major discretionary speeches utilizing recessions as the indicator of poor economic conditions. In addition, we also investigate the subject matter of major discretionary speeches given during both economic expansions and contractions. Presidents potentially have an incentive during a recession to focus the attention of the public away from economic concerns, where they have little command and control ability, to foreign policy, where they do have more power to act …

Remembering Bill Holm And A Journey To Iceland, Nicholas Hayes

University Chair in Critical Thinking Publications

No abstract provided.

Barack Obama’S Iowa Caucuses Rhetoric, Samuel Gunawan

Bahasa dan Seni: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, Seni, dan Pengajarannya

This paper is to explore the depth of Barac Obama’s rhetoric in his Iowa Caucuses Speech: “Our Time for Change has Come”. Obama displayed his outstanding rhetorical craftsmanship to drive irresistibly his power of persuasion in the earliest Democratic Caucuses in the whitest state of Iowa that gave him a victory; thus the speech underscored the ground-breaking messages to the rest of the nation that America was ripe for an African-American President.

The Research On Site Selection Of Dry Port Cluster Of Ningbo Port, Jiawei Feng

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Research On The Fluctuation And Forecasting Of International Dry Bulk Shipping Market Cycle Based On Rocet, Qianmo Zhang

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Multimodal Transport Cost Analysis Of Coal Transport From Datong To Wh Power Station, Tingting Gao

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Research On Competitiveness Of The Shipping Sectors In Pudong Shipping Cluster Of Shanghai International Shipping Center, Yuan Feng

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Research On Inbound Logistics Strategy For Shanghai General Motors, Zhe Zou

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Liner Shipping Lane Planning From Shanghai Port To Guangzhou Port Of Shanghai Baoyin Shipping Co., Ltd, Zhujun Zhou

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Being Blacklisted By China, And What Can Be Learned From It, James A. Milward

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Bloomberg, and more recently The Washington Post, have run stories about the visa problems of scholars who contributed to Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland, a volume edited by Frederick Starr and published by M.E. Sharpe in 2004. The Bloomberg piece was exhaustively reported; the reporters who wrote it, Dan Golden and Oliver Staley, conducted interviews with Chinese as well as western participants in the episode, and all in all did a good job with a complicated story. Inevitably, however, the Bloomberg piece creates some misconceptions, and these are as likely to be reinforced as cleared up in news reports that build …

The Continuing Development Of The Ngo Sector In Kyrgyzstan: Experience From One Ngo In Naryn Kg, Brad Pribe

Capstone Projects – Politics and Government

Central Asia, once a part of the Soviet Union, is located between China, Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Kyrgyzstan (KG) is a small country with a population of 5.5 million people, 20% of the population living within two cities, the capital, Bishkek, and the second largest city of Osh.1 Mountains are the most distinctive physical feature, covering more than two thirds of the country and separating certain areas from others with only a small mountain pass as the means of travel. Surprisingly, the average American knows very little about Central Asia, much less Kyrgyzstan. Therefore, I decided to …

European Union Accession To The European Convention On Human Rights: An Institutional “Marriage”, Konstantinos G. Margaritis

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A possible accession of European Union (hereinafter: EU/the Union) to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR/the Convention) has been discussed in legal society for more than thirty years. The topic had widely opened after the 1979 Commission Memorandum where the major pros and cons were underlined and practical problems were addressed. This discussion led to an official request to the European Court of Justice (ECJ/the Court) in relation to the legality of such accession; the outcome was included in opinion 2/94 that found such accession incompatible with the European Community (EC/the Community) Treaty.

© Konstantinos G. Margaritis. All rights …

Humphreys, George Gary, B. 1949 (Fa 564), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 564. Interview conducted by George Gary Humphreys with Lexington attorney and political memorabilia collector Julius Edward Rather. Rather discusses 20th century politicians he knew and how he got involved in collecting political memorabilia.

Fifty More Years? Reform And Modernisation Of The Oecd, Richard Woodward

Articles

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development is a vital, if frequently unnoticed, cog in the machine of global governance. On the organisation's 50th anniversary, Richard Woodward assesses whether the OECD's reform programme can secure its future in a changing world.

Naturalized Mexican Immigrants And Their Voting Behavior, Cynthia Hernandez

Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)

Explain determinants of voting with a main focus on the effect of membership in Mexican hometown associations. In particular, does membership make it more or less likely that Mexican immigrants who have naturalized will vote?

Courageous Peace, Ann Abdoo

Citizens for Peace

Is peace a sign of courage or weakness? This essay addresses the issue. It was published in the Michigan Department of Peace Campaign, Political Action Guide 2009-2010.

The Political Action Guide is published by Citizens for Peace, a grassroots organization from Michigan's 11th Congressional District. The Guide inclues information on the Department of Peace Legislation, historical and current as well as information on ways to become politically active.

Within the Guide, there is also a directory of many Michigan organizations working for a more peaceful world and the websites of national organizations.

To acquire a current edition, contact Colleen …