Political Science Commons^™

Emotional, Psychological, And Behavioral Challenges Of Children With Incarcerated Parents, Starr Bailey, Marie Antoinette Wakefield

McNair Poster Presentations

Children of incarcerated mothers and fathers are at a high risk of developing emotion­al, psychological, and behavioral problems (Dallaire, 2000; Lotze, Ravindran, & Myers, 2010; Nurse, 2004). The literature review conducted for this study noted several problem­atic behaviors. Some children were at a high risk for delinquency and criminal activity. Others experienced several home displacements which led to foster care or grand parenting responsibilities (Belknap, 2006). Further, mental health issues and school behavior prob­lems were directly linked to parental incarceration (Arditti, 2012). Four main problems in children were identified, which included aggression, anxiety, poor concentration, and so­cial withdrawal. Some children …

American Influence In The International Financial Institutions, Shawn Rosen, Jonathan R. Strand

McNair Poster Presentations

As the world becomes more globalized and the prosperity of new, rising powers begins to challenge that of long-standing powers, many scholars and policy-makers have begun to examine America’s place in the global political economy. Ongoing changes in the world politi­cal economy such as the flourishing economies in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), continued integration in Europe, as well as questions about eco­nomic policies derived from American dominated neoliberal ideology have raised many doubts regarding how long the United States can remain the world leader. The conventional wisdom holds that the United States has enough …

Governing Through Permanent Campaigning: Media Usage And Press Freedom In Ecuador, Maria J. Flor Agreda

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

In Ecuador, media and politics have been historically tied together. Over time, the banking industry has had financial stakes in the media and vice versa. Yet, from the time that President Rafael Correa took office in 2007, the situation has been turned around. Correa has used a permanent campaign to appeal to the public and change the media ownership environment of the country. The President’s strategy has included the acquisition of private media such as newspapers, and radio and television station; as well as the establishment of governmental media entities. Additionally, as part of Correa’s permanent campaign scheme, the president …

Intercultural Training: A Thesis Project, Laura Snyder

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

This study examines the scholarly journals and literature of intercultural competency, intercultural communication, and the communication theories examining culture shock, cross-cultural adaptation, immersion techniques, and training methods used in multicultural competence. It then presents intercultural training modules with the ambition to be adopted and incorporated into all intercultural expatriation trainings utilized both by private individuals, as well as international businesses and government programs with employees relocating internationally. The training modules are specifically directed at learners who need to know about the cultural climate, rules, and communication expectations of Singapore.

Women For Obama: A Metaphor Criticism Of Political Facebook Use, Natasha Merkle

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

The political rhetoric of U.S. Presidential Elections has been studied for years, but not significantly through the lens of social media. While the statistical relevance of social media as a political communication tool is not yet widespread, the numbers have grown drastically since 2008. This increase in usage prompted the author to determine how rhetoric is most effectively communicated over social media to key audiences. This study is a metaphor criticism of the Women for Obama Facebook page as it appeared during the final 90 days prior to the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election. Four metaphors are used to describe the …

Examining The Influence Of National And Organizational Culture On Performance Evaluation And Recognition Structures In A Multinational Organization, Katie Bliven

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

This study examines how well organizational culture functions as a mechanism to support diversity and respect for employees’ national culture in a multinational organization. Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions and Ting-Toomey’s face negotiation theory provide a framework for understanding the needs and expectations of individual employees regarding performance evaluation and recognition from leaders for culture-specific skill sets. The study was conducted at a multinational call center located in Ireland, where employees negotiate the collection of negative balances for online payment accounts belonging to customers in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and APAC (Asia Pacific) regions of the world. …

Voter Suppression: The Rhetoric Of New Voting Laws And The Republican Agenda, Michael C. Mcgee

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

This study examines the rhetoric used by Republican politicians regarding voter ID laws. Using Kenneth Burke’s theory of cluster analysis, key words and clustering terms are analyzed to identify the speaker’s worldview. The main sections include: philosophical assumptions about political rhetoric, the theoretical basis derived from Burke’s identification and victimage theories, a review of literature on the history of voting in the United States, results and discussion from the analysis of selected rhetoric from Republican politicians, and areas of further study. Statements from Republican politicians in Iowa, Texas, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania were selected for the analysis. The results of …

Effects Of Social Media On Individual Voting, Noel Albert Bermudez

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

In the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama established social media as an essential part of the campaign toolbox. Twitter, a widely-used social media site, provides a means of creating virtual communities that can instantly send messages and move "followers" to action. This thesis seeks to ascertain if Twitter messages - sent to known supporters by a presidential campaign asking a person to vote - can positively affect that person's likelihood to cast a ballot and, if so, would that vote be for the candidate whose campaign tweeted the message. Media ecology, as proposed by Marshall McLuhan and developed by Neil …

Associative Duties And Immigration, Javier S. Hidalgo

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

This paper evaluates an argument for immigration restrictions that appeals to the costs that immigration imposes on the citizens of a recipient state. According to this argument, citizens have associative duties to protect each other’s interests, immigration can damage these interests in certain cases, and the associative duties between compatriots justify immigration restrictions in these cases. Call this: the partiality argument for immigration restrictions. I argue that the partiality argument is unsound. Immigration restrictions violate negative duties to refrain from interfering with people’s liberties and these duties silence compatriots’ associative duties to one another. Furthermore, I argue that compatriots lack …

A Decade Of Aid: The Increase, Impact And Alternative To Foreign Aid, Ryan Piers

Masters Theses

The first term of George H.W. Bush's presidency saw an increase in governmentally distributed foreign aid unparalleled in United States' history. This increase came at time in which the debate over the practicality of foreign aid had never been higher amongst academics. Historically, there are two separate branches of research in the study of foreign aid. The first examines the effects of the practice, while the other investigates the determinants of foreign aid, namely which donors give to which recipients and why. This study is twofold in a sense that it touches on both topics.

This thesis analyzed President George …

The Advancement Of European Security Integration, Rachel Anne Dicke

Masters Theses

For almost a decade and a half the European Union has been steadily developing as a global security actor, attempting to unify disparate national security polices into a more coherent, European security policy. The progress of European Security Integration (ESI) is the subject of this thesis, and has been examined in terms of three critical elements. By studying an EU-level defense institution, several individual member states, and an EU-led crisis management operation, a more comprehensive sense of the process could be obtained. The European Defence Agency is analyzed in Chapter 2, followed by the states Denmark, Sweden, and Finland in …

Immortal Stalemate: U.S.-Iranian Relations & The Diversionary Theory Of War, Namdar Hosseinzadeh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Plagued by diverging security interests, the United States and Iran have been unable to formally reestablish diplomatic relations since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Since 1989, the political environment in Iran underwent drastic changes with the passing of Ayatollah Khomeini. For the next sixteen years Iranian presidents attempted to normalize relations with the U.S. through various political, economic and social initiatives. It appeared as though the hostile relationship between the two countries was slowly becoming friendly. With the emergence of controversial populist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the years of diplomatic progress between the U.S. and Iran were quickly reversed. In this …

African Regional Organizations And Democracy, Stephanie Schoppert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Instability and political repression are two reasons why many states in Africa are unable to develop. African regional organizations have the potential to encourage democracy, stability and development within their regions if they have the right tools. Using case studies of two major interventions by African regional organizations this thesis will determine what those tools may be. Both the intervention of ECOWAS into Liberia and the SADC into the DRC were rife with problems but they were able to bring some stability and even democracy to states in crisis. This thesis finds that African regional organizations can promote democracy and …

On Obama Administration Gun Policy With Continual Reference To The Multiple Streams Model, Michael Hristakopoulos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Multiple Streams model developed by John Kingdon (1995) and Nikolaos Zahariadis (2007) provides a valuable framework for understanding the nature of policy change. This investigation draws extensively upon the Multiple Streams framework in order to understand the development of gun-control policy initiatives under President Barack Obama. The investigation uses a case-study approach with in-depth analysis of four different mass-shooting events that took place in the United States between 2009 and 2012. Reconstruction of the shooting events and detailed parsing of the Obama administration’s official responses to each incident, when viewed through the Multiple Streams lens, clearly explain why Obama’s …

The President's Party At The Midterm: An Aggregate And Individual-Level Analysis Of Seat Loss And Vote Choice In U.S. House Elections, David Macdonald

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of midterm U.S. House elections using a multi-level research design. At the aggregate-level, multiple regression analysis is used to examine the variables that affect seat loss for the president’s party. This integrates, updates and extends the extant literature of the topic, and offers a means of explaining and predicting seat losses by the president’s party in the U.S. House. To further probe the findings at the aggregatelevel, the thesis develops a pooled cross-sectional model of individual-level vote choice in midterm U.S. House elections using data from the American National Election Studies (1982- 2002) and …

Human Trafficking For Sexual Exploitation In Southeast Asia, Nodwarang Niamvanichkul

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study centers on the political aspects of human trafficking and sexual exploitation in Southeast Asia. Specifically, the human trafficking is a security studies concern because it is not only a social issue, but also a security threat. Just as with drug trafficking, human trafficking has security consequences. The study analyzed human trafficking issues in the following three countries in Southeast Asia: Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia. These three countries were chosen due to the high levels of human trafficking. In each of the chosen cases, there is an examination of human trafficking issues in terms of political structures, political policies, …

Hidden In Plain Sight: Development And Testing Of A Model To Evaluate Political Leadership Tactics, Albert Citron

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the kinds of verbal and nonverbal signals elites manifest to show leadership qualities. Launching from Max Weber’s conceptual framework of charisma as a power term and Harold Lasswell’s study of propaganda, this study takes a multidisciplinary approach to studying political leadership with elements of communication methodology and an ontological basis in evolutionary psychology. The study’s goal is to offer a framework for defining and evaluating the diverse signal patterns employed by political elites in three real-life situations. These are the Malta Summit, the 1992 Virginia Presidential Debate, and the 2012 South Carolina Republican Presidential Primary. The cases …

Terrorism: The Effect Of Positive Social Sanctions, Curtis Hibbert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research shows that relative deprivation, mental illness, culture, ideology, and various forms of social learning are often identified as factors that can lead an individual to terrorism. However, understanding the value of influences in the form of positive social sanctions through social contact has not been fully explored throughout terrorist studies. In regards to influencing behavior, positive social sanctions elicit a desired behavior which is reinforced through praise or rewards. By utilizing a case study approach, this thesis looks to determine the significance of positive social sanctions through social contact on select individuals who have committed an act of terror …

International Organizations, Free Trade And Environmental Citizenship: Mexico And Chile In Comparative Perspective, Sherrie Baver

Publications and Research

This paper focuses on the potential of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and specific International Organizations (IOs) to promote democratic and effective environmental governance. FTAs are often cited in the political science literature for their negative impacts; yet, they are central to the present stage of economic globalization. Given that U.S. FTAs have environmental requirements as do accession agreements to developed country IOs (e.g. OECD), they remain under-explored institutions providing space for activists to expand environmental citizenship. The specific research question explored here is how might activists use these institutions to promote procedural environmental rights to information, participation, and justice, collectively …

Petitions, Privacy, And Political Obscurity, Rebecca Green

Faculty Publications

People who sign petitions must accept disclosure of their political views. This conclusion rests on the seemingly uncontroversial (if circular) premise that petition signing is a public activity. Courts have thus far shown little sympathy for individuals who take a public stand on an issue by signing a petition and then assert privacy claims after the fact. Democracy, after all, takes courage, as Justice Scalia wrote in the petitioning disclosure case Doe v. Reed. But signing a petition today brings consequences beyond public criticism. The real threat of disclosure for modern petition signers is not tangible harassment, but the loss …

Mapping Dissent: The Responsibility To Protect And Its State Critics, Patrick Quinton-Brown

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Addressing dissent, also known as ‘rejectionism’, will broaden and deepen the global consensus on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle. However, how should scholars understand the objections raised by state critics? To answer this question, I analyse R2P opposition as presented in official UN transcripts, voting records, and resolutions. The article reveals that six related themes of dissent exist with varying degrees of emphasis amongst opponents. Conventional depictions of R2P opposition, such as the absolute sovereignty or North vs. South explanations, are therefore inadequate representations of the diverse range of arguments employed by dissenters. Ultimately, I conclude that in order …

Examining The Relationship Between Environmental Policy And Economic Competitiveness In The United States And The European Union, Scott A. Trail

Masters Theses

In sum, when considering the findings of all three chapters of this thesis cumulatively, several implications are worth noting in regards to the relationship between environmental policy and economic competitiveness. First, the notion that adopting stringent environmental standards will impede on a state's ability to remain economically competitive was shown to be the exception, rather than the rule in all of the cases surveyed in this thesis. Moreover, the cumulative research throughout this thesis has shown the depth of complexity that exists between environmental and economic policy networks. Each chapter illustrated how the general relationship between government and private interests …

Is Nigeria's Conflict Ethnic Or Religious?: Resolving The Escalating Conflict In Nigeria, Ejikeme Nonso Alo

Masters Theses

The history and politics in Nigeria have often been characterized and marred with conflict, ranging from political to religious, ethnic and electoral violence. In this study, Edward Azar's Protracted Social Conflict theory which advocates for a multidimensional analysis of conflict was adopted in an attempt to properly understanding the nature and manifestation of the current Boko Haram insurgence in Nigeria. Methodologically, both the qualitative and quantitative methods were deployed. Survey's (questionnaires and evidence from social media) was conducted in the three regions with the aim of comparing and contrasting various perspectives on the root cause of the conflict. While lack …

May It Please The Environment?: A Study Of The Role Regional Location Plays In Influencing Federal Court Decisions On Fossil Fuel Cases, Stephen Perrott

Senior Independent Study Theses

No abstract provided.

Institutional Vs. Non-Institutional Sources Of Presidential Influence: Explaining Congressional-Presidential Relations In The Age Of Polarization, Derek Culp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the determinants of presidential success with Congress. Seven essential sources of presidential power in the current era of party polarization were derived from the extant literature, and these factors were delineated into the institutional (formal) and non-institutional (informal) policymaking tools of the presidency. Variables that explain presidential legislative success include: intraparty support in Congress, the use of veto bargaining, executive orders and signing statements (institutional factors); as well as public approval, ‘going public,’ and strategic lobbying of Congress (non-institutional factors). Case studies of the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush analyze the role of these …

The Effects Of The Norm Of International Election Monitoring On Voters' Confidence Levels In Francophone West Africa's Presidential Elections 1990-2011, Lauren E. Gilliss

Senior Independent Study Theses

International election monitoring is a phenomenon that began to spread rapidly in the 1990s and has since become an essential element of elections in the developing world. This study assesses the relationship between the presence of international election monitors during presidential elections and levels of voters' confidence in the electoral process. Several questions guide the study: How did the norm of international election monitoring develop and how widely do governments adhere to this norm? Are citizens more confident in the efficacy and transparency of presidential elections when international monitors are present? I hypothesize that when governments adhere to the norm …

Power And Purpose : U.S. Foreign Aid And Development, Jeremy L. Wells

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Foreign aid represents about 1 percent of the United States federal budget, but it also represents a significant portion of many recipient countries’ gross domestic products. Although there has been substantial interest in foreign aid among international political economy researchers over the last decade or so, there are still few if any answers to the most basic questions: who gets foreign aid, how much, and is it effective? Through a combination of cross-national analyses and a quantitative case study of Afghanistan during the Taliban insurgency of 2003–2009, this dissertation seeks to advance our understanding of the utility of foreign aid …

Greece In Crisis: An Interview With Despina Lalaki, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

After Assad: Syria’S Post-Conflict Reconstruction, H. M. Roff

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Simon Adams and Condoleezza Rice warn us that with the portended fall of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, the country could witness even more heinous crimes and, potentially, regional political fallout. These worries are not unfounded. However, what seems to be truly missing in their discussions is any mention of post-conflict reconstruction planning. This is unfortunate, as much handwringing is still occurring over "what to do" in Syria, and it will continue until there is a clear vision of what to do after this civil war. Syria's post-conflict reconstruction plan is—or should be—inherently tied to its current operational agenda.

Protracted Social Conflict: A Reconceptualization And Case Analysis, Melissa M. C. Beaudoin

Theses and Dissertations

What are the necessary components of protracted social conflict (PSC)? The works of Edward Azar have laid the foundation as to how PSC is approached in modern scholarship by identifying four necessary components: effective participation, security, distinctive identity, and social recognition of identity. However, do these components account for all of the descriptive and sustaining aspects of PSC? How are these components measured? Furthermore, testing and verification of these components has been limited. Of specific interest to this dissertation, then, is how the theory of PSC is organized and what its theoretically necessary components truly are. This dissertation reconceputalizes and …