Political Science Commons^™

Solutions To The Conflict In Kashmir, Nikolis Kurr

International ResearchScape Journal

This policy paper investigates the conflict between India and Pakistan over the region of Kashmir in order to weigh whether a political rather than military resolution can be found. Various proposals to resolve the conflict are examined and evaluated. On the one hand, the possibility of Kashmir’s autonomy is considered; on the other, the solution of joint governance or, as a third option, formal partition of Kashmir in an Indian and Pakistani territory are explored. The importance of resuming political talks between India and Pakistan represents a primary first goal in order to make any resolution possible.

Populist Parties In Germany, France, And The Uk: Growing Support For A Radical Rejection Of Globalization?, Linda Brandt

International ResearchScape Journal

A mere look at electoral results on both the national and European level of many European countries shows that populist and right-wing parties’ support has been growing extensively. The French Front National (FN), which has made significant strides since Marine Le Pen took over the party’s leadership, is often seen as on the forefront of this movement, and is deemed to be a core part of the contemporary European extreme right. Although their individual agendas and rhetoric differ from that of the FN, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the German Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) are often …

Terrorist And Insurgent Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Use, Potentials, And Military Implications, Robert J. Bunker

CGU Faculty Books

This manuscript focuses on the present threat posed by terrorist and insurgent use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as well as associated future threat potentials. This work presents a counterintuitive analysis in the sense that armed drones are typically viewed as a component of America’s conventional warfighting prowess—not a technology that would be used against U.S. troops deployed overseas or against civilians back home. The emerging threat of such UAV use against the United States is investigated, and the unique analysis and creative approach related to the threat scenario variants generated are very informative. Hopefully, the larger implications posed by …

Mass Media Consumption In Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan And Kazakhstan: The View From Below, Barbara Junisbai, Azamat Junisbai, Nicola Ying Fry

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

This article examines how ordinary people utilize and assess the information options available to them drawing on original, nationally representative surveys conducted in 2012 in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, two regimes characterized by different trajectories since independence. In both countries, television is the main go-to source, while the Internet is used least. Trust in media, however, follows an unexpected pattern. On average, media enjoy higher levels of trust in Kazakhstan than in Kyrgyzstan, despite greater media independence and pluralism in the latter. Ironically, open political competition and media freedom in Kyrgyzstan may have a dampening effect on public trust, while in …

‘Please Be A Lady… You Are Not Going To Be Heard’: The Debate Over The Ratification Of The Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women, Kasie Durkit

International ResearchScape Journal

Why did the United States fail to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women? This overarching question forms the basis of this paper and will be answered using an array of primary and secondary sources. This paper gleans most of its evidence from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearings of 1994 and 2002, letters from both President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Congressional Research Service reports on CEDAW from 2013 and 2007, several Senators’ statements in the Congressional Record, Congressional testimony, and the text of the CEDAW treaty. This …

Moishe Postone And The Critique Of Traditional Marxism: Helplessness And The Present Moment Of The Great Acceleration, Alexander M. Stoner, Andony Melathopoulos

Book Sections/Chapters

This chapter situates Moishe Postone's critique of traditional Marxism in relation to the present moment of the Great Acceleration. We engage a close reading of Postone reinterpretation of Marx's mature theory of capital with specific focus on the linkage between economic growth and ecological degradation, and how this linkage is necessary connected to social domination in modern capitalist society. Postone's Marxian theory is significant because, as we demonstrate, it allows one to grasp societally induced environmental degradation following WWII in a critical and reflexive manner. The chapter concludes by discussing the growing sense of helplessness that defines the present moment …

Georg Lukács (1885-1971) And The Critique Of Reification: On The Dialectical Genesis Of The Great Acceleration, Alexander M. Stoner, Andony Melathopoulos

Book Sections/Chapters

This chapter situates Lukács' critique of reification (1923) in relation to the emergence of the Great Acceleration. We develop Lukács' critique through the issue of the increasing rationalization of industrial and administrative work in the early twentieth century. In do so, we show how Lukács is able to relocate the continued relevance of Marx's insights with respect to the deeper structure of capitalist society in his consideration of the differential manner in which proletariat and bourgeois class consciousness approach the problem of social contradictions. We then discuss how, for Lukács, the overcoming of reification (or the failure to do so) …

2015 Forecast La Conference Book, Fernando J. Guerra, Brianne Gilbert, Berto Solis, Maia Krause, Alejandra Alarcon, Brianda Alvarez

Forecast LA

No abstract provided.

Evaluating The “Success” Of Disarmament, Demobilization, And Reintegration Programs: The Case Of Congo-Brazzaville, Zachary Karazsia

Journal of Interdisciplinary Conflict Science

The end of hostilities between warring factions in Congo-Brazzaville has marked a decisive moment in the state’s developmental history. Post conflict reconstruction is a foundational component of public policies that restore order within society, igniting the engines of economic development, and in obtaining sustainable peace. In recent years, Africa has experienced a disproportionate share of conflicts compared with other regions; and leads the world in the number of present intrastate conflicts. Since the end of the Cold War, some African states have made advances in post conflict peacebuilding and intergroup reconciliation. This article focuses on post conflict reconstruction through the …

Everyday Indivisibility: How Exclusive Religious Practices Explain Variation In Subnational Violence Outcomes, Joel Kieth Day

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores the puzzle of religious violence variation. Religious actors initiate conflict at a higher rate than their secular counterparts, last longer, are more deadly, and are less prone to negotiated termination. Yet the legacy of religious peacemakers on the reduction of violence is undeniable. Under what conditions does religion contribute to escalated violence and under what conditions does it contribute to peace?

I argue that more intense everyday practices of group members, or high levels of orthopraxy, create dispositional indivisibilities that make violence a natural alternative to bargaining. Subnational armed groups with members whose practices are exclusive and …

New Middle East Cold War: Saudi Arabia And Iran's Rivalry, Tali Rachel Grumet

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The competing powers of Saudi Arabia and Iran continue to redress and reverse the strategic imbalance and direction of the Middle East’s regional politics. The 1979 Iranian Revolution catapulted these two states into an embittered rivalry. The fall of Saddam Hussein following the 2003 U.S. led invasion, the establishment of a Shi’ite Iraq and the 2011 Arab Uprisings have further inflamed tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Iran and Saudi Arabia have not confronted each other militarily, but rather have divided the region into two armed camps on the basis of political and religious ideology in seeking regional allies and …

A Discursive Perspective On China's Global Politics Of Climate Change, 1992–2013, Yi-Tsui Tseng

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates China’s recent shift in its climate change policy with a refined discourse approach. Methodologically, by adopting a neo-Gramscian notion of hegemony, a generative definition of discourse and an ontological pluralist position, the study constructs a theoretical framework named “discursive hegemony” that identifies the “social forces” for enabling social change and focuses on the role of discursive mechanisms via which the forces operate and produce effects.

The key empirical finding of this study was that it was a co-evolution of conditions that shaped the outcome as China’s climate policy shift. In examining the case, a before-after within-case comparison …

President Bush And Immigration Policy Rhetoric: The Effects Of Negativity On The Political Landscape At The State Level, C. Damien Arthur Phd, Joshua Woods

Political Science Faculty Research

The attention paid to immigration since September 11th has become more pronounced. We maintain that the increases in attention are due to a significant critical juncture: the Republican Party Platform of 2004 and President Bush’s subsequent reelection. The rhetoric has become more negative and exclusive, creating a pervasive immigrant narrative. What are the ramifications, if any, of this shift in discourse from such central political figures for immigrants? Attempts to change immigration policy, despite the rhetoric, have not materialized nationally. President Bush recognized the limitations of ‘going public’ and, instead, took his immigration policy proposals to state legislatures, wherein ideological …

On Dialectics And Human Decency: Education In The Dock, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Set against the backdrop of the contemporary crisis of capitalism and world-historical events, this article examines the advance of globalized imperialism from the perspective of a Marxist-humanist approach to pedagogy known as ‘revolutionary critical pedagogy’ enriched by liberation theology. It is written as an epistolic manifesto to the transnational capitalist class, demanding that those who willingly serve its interests reconsider their allegiance and calling for a planetary revolution in the way that we both think about capitalism and how education and religion serves to reproduce it at the peril of both students and humanity as a whole.

Ua68/10/1 Potter College Of Arts & Letters Sociology Publications, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Publications created by and about Sociology. Including Sociology, Anthropology & Social Work while a part of Potter College.

Ua68/2 Potter College Of Arts & Letters Interdisciplinary Studies, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Interdisciplinary Studies which include:

• African American Studies
• Asian Studies
• Canadian Studies
• Film Studies
• Latin American Studies

Ua3/2/1 President's Office-Garrett Correspondence/Subject File, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

General correspondence and subject files regarding Western Kentucky University.

Environmentalism And Environmental Constitutional Ballot Initiatives In Florida: The Elements Of Support For Amendment One In 2014 In The Context Of Current Environmental Attitudes., Michael Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Americans express support for “the environment” with environmental support cutting across political and demographic differences and cleavages. In the past 15 years, however, period effects, political sorting, and the emergence of a powerful anti-environmental movement have lessened the generalized levels of environmental support. Using the 2012 CCES survey, the expressed attitudes regarding multiple environmental issues found significant differences in levels of environmental support nationally by party, Tea Party attitudes, ideology, and certain demographic characteristics. For Floridians, the differences between the most pro-environmental respondents and the most anti-environmental are narrower; partisan identification itself is not significant in environmental attitudes; but ideology, …

Sexism And Women: The Implications Of Female Gender Resentment, Christine Regnier-Bachand

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Do women suffer from a societal Stockholm Syndrome which leads them to display high levels of modern and traditional sexist behavior? Does a woman*s level of modern or traditional sexist behavior influence her political choices? Female gender resentment and sexist biases are an understudied area of the extant literature on sexism. Typically the focus is placed on men*s sexist attitudes and treatment of women, but is it possible that women also contribute to the subordination of their gender through sexist practices? These are questions which this thesis attempts to answer. The findings indicate that working women under the age of …

Do Political Attitudes And Religiosity Share A Genetic Path?, Amanda Friesen, Aleksander Ksiazkiewicz

Political Science Publications

Social scientists have long recognized and sought to explain a connection between religious and political beliefs. Our research challenges the prevalent view that religion and politics constitute separate but related belief sets with a conceptual model that suggests the correlation between the two may be partially explained by an underlying psychological construct reflecting first principle beliefs on social organization. Moreover, we also push this challenge further by considering whether part of the relationship between political and religious beliefs is the result of shared genetic influences, which would suggest that a shared biological predisposition, or set of biological predispositions, underlies these …

Economic Survival And Borderland Rebellion: The Case Of The Allied Demoocratic Forces On The Uganda-Congo Border, Lindsay Scorgie-Porter

Faculty Publications

One of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s oldest, most organized, and traditionally best-trained—but, arguably, least known—rebel groups is the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). Its resiliency and particularly its economic survival skills have largely been understood through the prism of Islamic extremism. Yet this narrative has proven to have serious inaccuracies and flaws. Explanations focused on terrorism, for example, do not take into consideration the ADF’s pivotal business ventures, such as cross-border trade, agriculture, and the taxing of timber forests. They not only ignore these activities but are unable to explain how the ADF was able to practice, and become successful …

State Borders In Africa, Lindsay Scorgie-Porter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Making Progress In Idaho State Budgeting: The Sequel, Dick Kinney

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper examines Idaho state budgeting decisions for Fiscal Year 2014 and assesses what progress has been made to return to the state’s revenue and spending levels before the hard times in 2009 and 2010 (Kinney 2010; Kinney 2011). After briefly describing Idaho’s population and politics, the report discusses the state’s economic and General Fund revenue contexts for budget decision making. It then analyzes the governor’s budget and the legislature’s appropriations and considers two important potential impacts of these decisions. Progress in Idaho state budgeting continued to be mixed. The state economy generally gained since the recession years although prospects …

The Theological Foundations Of Religious Liberty In The Thought Of John Locke And James Madison, Edward M. Yager

Commonwealth Review of Political Science

Religious liberty is an important human right supported by both religious and secular m:guments. This work explores John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration and James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance and identifies a common theological or religious argument supporting religions liberty as the requisite means to satisfy the duties of conscience to the Creator. Since individual duty and accountability to God is a shared premise among theistic faith traditions, this approach to advancing religions liberty and religious pluralism may have broader appeal and utility to reformers in faith traditions not especially responsive to secular arguments.

Negotiating Citizenships And Borders Of Political Belonging, Paul Nesbitt-Larking

Data and Test Instruments

No abstract provided.

Inventing Human Dignity, Sharon Sliwinski

Data and Test Instruments

Are human beings endowed with an inviolable dignity? Or is dignity something that is lost and won? One of the most significant assertions made in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is the statement that every individual possesses an inalienable dignity simply by virtue of belonging to the “human family.”This chapter aims to make a modest contribution to the emerging scholarship on the history and meaning of dignity as it pertains to universal human rights. My goal is to trace how this particular quality came to be affixed to the human person.The chief proposition is that the invention …

No. 21: The State Of Poverty And Food Insecurity In Maseru, Lesotho, Resetselemang Leduka, Jonathan Crush, Bruce Frayne, Cameron Mccordic, Thope Matobo, Ts’Episo Makoa, Matseliso Mphale, Mmantai Phaila, Moipone Letsie

African Food Security Urban Network

This report on food insecurity in urban Lesotho is the latest in a series on Southern African cities issued by AFSUN. Like the previous reports, it focuses on one city (Maseru) and on poor neighbourhoods and households in that city. More than 60% of poor households surveyed in Maseru were severely food insecure. While food price increases worsen food insecurity for poor households, it is poverty that weakens the resilience of society to absorb these increases. This report argues that Maseru residents face specific and interrelated challenges with respect to food and nutrition insecurity. These are poverty; limited local livelihood …

Excusing Murder? Conservative Jurors’ Acceptance Of The Gay Panic Defense, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Jessica Salerno, Bette L. Bottoms, B. L. Harrington, Dave Kemner

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

We conducted a simulated trial study to investigate the effectiveness of a “gay-panic” provocation defense as a function of jurors’ political orientation. Mock jurors read about a murder case in which a male defendant claimed a victim provoked the killing by starting a fight, which either included or did not include the male victim making an unwanted sexual advance that triggered a state of panic in the defendant. Conservative jurors were significantly less punitive when the defendant claimed to have acted out of gay panic as compared to when this element was not part of the defense. In contrast, liberal …

Review Of The Dispensable Nation, Alan Hickey, Shanna Dungan, Corey Cherrington

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

Not long ago, Vali Nasr released a revealing account of his time with the U.S. Department of State as an advisor to Richard Holbrooke, the U.S.’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. In his book the Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat, we learn that the Obama administration did not live up to its potential in the realm of foreign policy. In fact, Nasr goes so far as to contend that the current leadership of the United States has hindered the U.S.’s ability to enact effective policy decisions abroad and has weakened our nation’s world leadership role.

What Were They Thinking? The Federal Reserve In The Run-Up To The 2008 Financial Crisis, Stephen S. Golub, Ayse Kaya, M. Reay

Political Science Faculty Works

The Federal Reserve (the Fed) is responsible for monitoring, analyzing and ultimately stabilizing US financial markets. It also has unrivalled access to economic data, high-level connections to financial institutions, and a large staff of professionally trained economists. Why then was it apparently unconcerned by the financial developments that are now widely recognized to have caused the 2008 financial crisis? Using a wide range of Fed documents from the pre-crisis period, particularly the transcripts of meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), this paper shows that Fed policymakers and staff were aware of relevant developments in financial markets, but paid …