Political Science Commons^™

Becoming Transnational Citizens: The Liberian Diaspora's Civic Engagement In The United States And In Homeland Peacebuilding, Janet Elizabeth Reilly

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the relationship between civic participation in homeland peacebuilding and immigrants' political incorporation and integration in their local communities in the United States. It explores the impact of state (U.S. and Liberia) policies and local context on individuals' civic participation locally and in transnational activities. The study demonstrates the mechanisms through which state policies and local context influence Liberians' political participation in the United States and their transnational citizenship, defined as full legal membership and civic participation. The relationship between civic engagement in the United States and in transnational activities is not an adversarial one. Engagement with the …

Peacebuilding After Civil War, Caroline A. Hartzell

Political Science Faculty Publications

Book Summary: This comprehensive new Handbook explores the significance and nature of armed intrastate conflict and civil war in the modern world. Civil wars and intrastate conflict represent the principal form of organised violence since the end of World War II, and certainly in the contemporary era. These conflicts have a huge impact and drive major political change within the societies in which they occur, as well as on an international scale. The global importance of recent intrastate and regional conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Nepal, Cote d'Ivoire, Syria and Libya – amongst others – has served to refocus …

Federalism And Subnational Political Community, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Origins Of The Movement And The Development Of Protest: The Birmingham Campaign, 1963, James Munro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Social movement theory in the late twentieth century has offered competing explanations for the origins and development of protest. In an attempt to explain the American Civil Rights Movement, scholars from the resource mobilization (RM) and political process theory (PPT) schools have provided somewhat mechanistic and formulaic explanations for how the black protest developed in the southern states. This study takes the emergence and development of protest in Birmingham, Alabama, culminating in the Birmingham Campaign of 1963, as a case study to examine the claims of RM and PPT. An evaluation of the Birmingham Campaign suggests the emergence of protest …

Not By Accident: How Egyptian Civil Society Successfully Launched A Revolution, Helen-Margaret Nasser

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the role of civil society in Egypt and argues that it was central to the success of the 2011 revolution that ended in the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. I will discuss the development of civil society under Mubarak and demonstrate its strength. In understanding civil society in Egypt, this thesis will discuss the strengths of groups such as associations, Islamist movements, women's groups, labor activism, and youth movements. I also demonstrate that it is important to understand the precedents established that shaped the state's stance towards civil society. As such, this thesis will also discuss the …

Inventing Burke: Edmund Burke And The Conservative Party, 1790-1918, Hannah Z. Sidney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the circumstances by which Edmund Burke came to be regarded as the father of Anglo-conservatism. Conventional wisdom assumes Burke was hailed as a Conservative oracle from the moment Reflections on the Revolution in France appeared. In fact, nineteenth century Conservatives considered Burke a "Whig" who had erred on most critical issues: slavery, Crown prerogative, Ireland, empire.

In the twentieth century, however, the advent of universal suffrage and the demise of the Liberal party forced Conservatives to develop an identity which might compete with Labour's mass appeal. It also shifted the locus of Conservative ire from liberalism to …

The Congo As A Case Study: The Making Of Unipolarity, Justin Tepper

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The current international system has been described by some as unipolar. After World War II, the United States was able to develop and solidify a liberal international order built upon multilateralist principles but founded upon American military and economic supremacy. As a result of the orders success, it has become global. The Cold War is generally understood as the conflict between the liberal capitalistic American-led order and the Marxist-Leninist Soviet-centered bloc. To fully understand the making of unipolarity, however, scholars must shift their focus to the process of decolonization and the intra-NATO tensions that developed. This paper will use the …

The Silent Guerrillas: Under Slavery, In Peasant Politics, And Throughout The Industrial And Social Factories, Kevin Van Meter

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the work that follows, I will examine what political theorist James C. Scott calls "the hidden transcripts" of social struggle, which are written between the lines of the political record through the quotidian and clandestine practices of resistance and mutual aid that are the first and last recourse of subjugated populations. By engaging with literature on contemporary and historical social movements, I will explore the emergence and brief legibility of these practices among chattel slaves in the American South, the peasantry in various settings, and in a number of other industrial and social settings in an attempt to determine …

South Africa And The United Nations Human Rights Council, Eduard Jordaan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article assesses South Africa's foreign policy commitment to human rights, by studying the country's role in the United Nations Human Rights Council, which began its work in 2006. South Africa's behavior is evaluated in terms of its participation in four aspects of the Council's work: the institution-building phase that took place during the body's first year, country-specific human rights issues, thematic human rights problems, and the Universal Periodic Review. It is concluded that, South Africa has become a defender of unpalatable regimes and an obstacle to the international promotion of human rights.

Sanctions Under The Eu's Generalised System Of Preferences (Gsp): Coherence By Accident?, Clara Portela, Jan Orbie

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article investigates the relationship between the European Union's withdrawal of trade benefits for developing countries under the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) and its sanctions under the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Our expectation is that GSP withdrawals and CFSP sanctions will not cohere. However, our research reveals that GSP suspension has been coherent with CFSP sanctions when the latter exist prior to the decision-making process on GSP sanctions and when the International Labour Organisation has set up a Commission of Inquiry condemning the country, as with Myanmar/Burma and Belarus. The presence of separate institutional frameworks explains the …

Political Thought, Political Development, And America’S Two Foundings, Elvin T. Lim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The relationship between American political thought (APT) and American political development (APD) as phenomena as well as subfields in American Politics has not been sufficiently theorized. This essay takes up what I call the Second Founding of 1787–89 as the critical case for examining the close relationship between APT and APD. The statesmen of that era were thinkers and developmentalists of the first order; they understood the inseparable link between political justification and political change. This dynamic relationship between American political thought and development practiced in 1787–89 can be used as a blueprint for understanding the entwined cycles of political …

Albert Camus' Political Thought: From Passion To Compassion, Angel López-Santiago

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present work analyzes the political thought of Albert Camus, specifically the challenges of the justice ideal, and Camus' prioritization of the concepts of limits and compassion. Although Camus is not usually considered part of the traditional canon of political philosophy, I organized his thought into three major areas: a sub-theory of the human being, a sub-theory of institutions, and a sub-theory of political change. This method, I demonstrate, is ideal for extracting and organizing the political ideas of non-traditional political writers. In the case of Camus, he advocates for an international and democratic `civilization of dialogue' as part of …

Game Theory Meets The Humanities And Both Win Or Book Review: Game Theory And The Humanities: Bridging Two Worlds, By Steven J. Brams, Karl-Dieter Crisman

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This review discusses Brams' wide-ranging book Game Theory and the Humanities and gives some basic examples of the methodology and style, including how the Theory of Moves contributes to understanding such games.

Elections And Election Campaigns, 1918 (Sc 1278), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1278. Campaign letter, 25 October 1918, of President Woodrow Wilson urging voters to elect a Democratic U.S. House and Senate; also campaign letter, 29 October 1918, of Kentucky Congressman R. Y. Thomas, Jr., to voters of the Third Congressional District asking for support.

Political Ecology, Joshua Defriez, Justine Larsen, Nicholas Hilton

Research on the Hill (Salt Lake City)

Environmental legislation is commonly accepted as an altruistic approach to land management. A closer examination however, reveals that political incentives and flawed arguments consistently shape U.S. environmental policy at high public costs. As student fellows at the Institute of Political Economy at Utah State University, we have had the opportunity to research this subject under the direction of Professor Randy Simmons. Political Ecology is his upcoming book that explores a variety of environmental policies, the incentives that created them, and their effects on both public lands and taxpayers. Our research contributions to this overall project specifically explore three separate case …

Truman, Kennedy, And Reagan: The Impact Of Assassination Attempts On The Culture Of The U.S. Secret Service, Briana Bowen

Research on the Hill (Salt Lake City)

The U.S. Secret Service (USSS), one of the most elite security agencies in the world, is charged with protecting the President of the United States at any cost. Three American presidents fell to assassins’ bullets before the USSS was assigned the role of presidential protection; one more would later be slain despite USSS protection. This study examines the organizational culture of the USSS, employing the methodology of cultural topography to identify the agency’s norms, values, identity, and perceptual lens. We review three of the most impactful twentieth-century assassination attempts— two failed, one successful—and their formative effect on USSS organizational culture. …

Public Opinion On Global Climate Change In Developed Countries: Five Case Studies, Adam Durfee

Research on the Hill (Salt Lake City)

Developed countries are more likely to be high emitters of green-house gases, and it is important that these countries are aware of the issue of global climate change and possible human contributions to that problem. Given their status as developed countries, one would think that public opinion on the sources of global climate change would be similar across nations, but this is not true. There is a lack of consensus among countries about the effects of human activity on global temperature variation, as opposed to natural fluctuation in global climate. Using case studies of the United States, France, Canada, Japan, …

The Reception Of Western Legal Reform In Bulgaria A Qualitative Study, Paul Edwards, Dr. Vanya Illieva Kalaidjieva

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The research I did ultimately seeks to answer the question whether the door to the West is open for Bulgaria. Bulgaria is not a Western country, even though it is in Europe. In fact it has never been a Western country.

Update On Germany: Shifting Priorities And Overcoming Crises, Anna Lisa Ohm, Austin Eighan

Forum Lectures

With globalization, the traditional postwar Atlantic Alliance between the U.S. and Germany is crumbling, the Holocaust narrative, which dominated the public discourse in the postwar period, is being disrupted by a greater willingness on the part of Germans to speak openly about their own victimization in the Third Reich, and, despite huge investments in former East Germany since unification in 1989, Germany remains Europe's most economically powerful and relatively most politically stable nation. Germany's place is demonstrated in part by the re-election of Angela Merkel's party in September 2013 and her third term as chancellor. Despite the somewhat shaken Euro, …

Internal Security, External Solutions: Reevaluating The Formation Of The Gulf Cooperation Council, Brock Evans Taylor, Dr. Donna Lee Bowen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The formal organization of the Gulf Cooperation Council began on February 4, 1981. After a ceremonial reading of a Qu’ranic Surah the heads of state of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman agreed in principle to facilitate cooperation between their respective countries. During the subsequent months, a formal charter was drafted and ratified by each government, legislating formal cooperation in economic, social, and political spheres. Since its formation, critics have reviewed the behavior and effects of the GCC’s, analyzing the fruits of the union.

Electoral Rules And The Democratic Party Of Japan, Benjamin D. Seal, Dr. Ray Christensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Political scientists continue to debate the effect of electoral rules on electoral outcomes. One area of intense study is proportional representation versus single-member districts, and single member districts versus multi-member districts. This research tests the effects of electoral rules on election results for the Democratic Party of Japan in the 1996 House of Representatives election and in the 1998 House of Councillors election. Analysis focuses specifically on how the Democratic Party, a minor party during the two elections covered, benefits from proportional representation (PR) and suffers in single-member districts (SMD).

International Justice: The Origin Of International Criminal Courts, Rachael Deceuster, Dr. Darren Hawkins

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of my research was to discover the origins of the recent international criminal tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda to prosecute persons accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. I focused on the Yugoslav tribunal because it was the first since the Nuremburg and Tokyo tribunals after WWII. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was the first in a series of international tribunals, including the newly formed and controversial International Criminal Court (ICC).

Urban-Rural Interaction In The Utah State Senate, Lael Cox, Dr. Jay Goodliffe

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Within a broader question of minority representation in democratic systems, this study shows how the maturity of legislators allows rural interests to be satisfied so as to avoid serious factional contention in the Utah State Senate.

Iranian Ngos, The State And Democratization, Shima Baradaran, Dr. John Griffin

Journal of Undergraduate Research

To understand modern politics, it is vital to study democracy. During the 1990’s, the number of people living in democracy doubled from one-third of the world’s population to two-thirds. Some countries overthrew authoritarian governments to achieve democracy (1). Often Non- Governmental Organizations, non- profit organizations working toward social and political change in a society, and other sectors of civil society aid in democratization. NGOs act as a check on governments, challenging them to enact legislation and follow laws relating to their specific goals. Examining the relationship of an authoritarian government with Nongovernmental Organizations provides insight into the current level of …

Women Representatives In The Japanese Parliament: Bumps And Scrapes Along The Road To Equality, J. Paul Mitchell, Dr. Ray Christensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Women account for an alarmingly low proportion of political representatives in Japan. Japan tends to elect fewer women to political office than nearly all other industrialized democracies.1 Despite popular support for a more balanced parliament, women accounted for only 15% of the winners in the recent Upper House elections.2 The struggle for gender equality in Japan’s parliament continues to encounter daunting resistance.

Applying Ecological Inference To The 2000 Mexican Elections, Matthew M. Singer, Dr. Jay Goodliffe

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In the 2000 Mexican Election, the PRI party lost a presidential election for the first time in Mexico’s history to Vincente Fox of the PAN party. There has been a great deal of recent scholarship examining voting behavior in Mexico. Most of it has focused on the calculation that risk-averse voters make in deciding whether to defect from the PRI i. There has been, however, little scholarship on why voters then choose a party other than the PRI. Individuals don’t just all defect; they need someone to defect to. Previous studies have not found evidence of social determinants, such as …

Fa’Asamoa And Western Institutions: A Comparative Study Between American Samoa And (Western) Samoa, Henrietta P. Emerson, Dr. Ray C. Christensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In most literature on the political systems of American Samoa and (Western) Samoa, the two countries are rarely grouped in the same study despite their shared cultural identity. An unincorporated territory of the United States, American Samoa tends to be classified with other U.S. territories which include Guam, the Northern Marianas, and the Virgin Islands (Cook 1995; Van Cleve 1993). Meanwhile, Samoa, an independent state since 1962, is more commonly compared to other independent Pacific island states (Lawson 1996; White and Linstrom 1997). While different colonial experiences clearly point out the reason for this separation, the inherent pervasiveness of Samoan …

Collective Begging At Its Best: Labor-Management Relations In South Dakota, Gary Aguiar

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Public employee labor unions in South Dakota possess a feeble set of bargaining rights, so weak it should be considered “collective begging.” However, our recent contract contains significant victories despite decades of playing defense. What lessons can be learned from this experience that might help other similarly situated faculty unions? What does this case study teach us about the disparity of power, especially where labor has fewer legal and political tools than management? I apply DiGiovanni’s (2011) typology of “intangible influences” on collective bargaining to explain our success. As DiGiovanni predicts, history and timing played a large role in influencing …

Developing A Theory Of Transnational Actor Salience, Christopher O'Keefe, Dr. Daniel Nielson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

My study focused on exploring the conditions under which non-state actors (NSAs) play important roles in international relations (IR). This field is known as transnational relations, the study of interactions between non-governmental organizations or individuals that influence world affairs as they act across national borders and states or other transnational actors (TNAs). Counted among these actors are multinational corporations (MNCs), international activist groups, terrorist organizations and drug cartels. Although two of the three central schools of international relations theory agree that states are the primary actors in IR (Baldwin 1993, 9), these organizations obviously play important roles in international politics. …

Psychological, Political, And Economic Factors Resulting In Romania’S Tragic Alliances During The Second World War, Matthew J. Thorne, Dr. Valerie Hudson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

If the purpose of science is to better understand our world, eliminate suffering, and generally make it a more inhabitable place, then lessons on how to avoid war, entangling alliances, and unwanted political ideologies may make Political Science the most important of all the sub sciences. Political Science is difficult because it presents limited possibilities for empirical testing and proofs; political scientists are left to do case studies instead of regressions, and psychological profiles instead of experiments. The importance of such work though can be easily seen when looking at the tragic tears of war, conquest, and subjugation in histories …