Political Science Commons^™

Evaluating The Relationship Between Conditionality And Foreign Aid Reliance, Rory Ann O'Neil

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Revisiting The Far Right Violent Extremist Threat: Violent Extremist Plot Success From 1948 Through 2017, Jesse Austin

Honors Theses and Capstones

Far Right violent extremists have successfully executed over 150 violent plots in the United States in just the past decade. This exploratory study analyzed Far Right violent extremist plot success with the plot success of Islamist violent extremists, Far Left violent extremists, and Single Issue violent extremists based on publicly available data from the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) for the period of 1948 through 2017. By evaluating existing literature on Far Right violent extremism and analyzing the available PIRUS data, it was discovered that while Far Right violent extremists executed more successful violent plots than …

Plato As Critical Theorist (Review), Joel Alden Schlosser

Political Science Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Democratic Theory When Democracy Is Fugitive, Joel Alden Schlosser, Ali Aslam, David Mcivor

Political Science Faculty Research and Scholarship

Urgent alarms now warn of the erosion of democratic norms and the decline of democratic institutions. These antidemocratic trends have prompted some democratic theorists to reject the seeming inevitability of democratic forms of government and instead to consider democracy as a fugitive phenomenon. Fugitive democracy, as we argue below, is a theory composed of two parts. First, it includes a robust, normative ideal of democracy and, second, a clear-eyed vision of the historical defeats and generic difficulties attendant to that ideal. This article considers how democratic theorists might respond to the challenges posed by fugitive democracy and the implications of …

Book Review: Vox Populi: The Perils & Promises Of Populism, Robert Weaver

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Bracero Program: The Bi-National Migrant Labor Agreement 1942-1964, Sandra Puebla

Compass: An Undergraduate Journal of American Political Ideas

This article explores the complex and fragile agreement between Mexico and the United States on migrant farm workers in the middle of the twentieth century.

Author information: Sandra Puebla is an undergraduate student at Northern Illinois University.

Is Gerrymandering Good For Democracy?, Jacob Rubel

Compass: An Undergraduate Journal of American Political Ideas

Does gerrymandering deserve the awful reputation it has received? Through a revaluation in light of Founding principles, gerrymandering’s hidden virtues are uncovered.

Author information: Jacob Rubel is a rising sophomore at Tufts University majoring in political science, with an emphasis in political theory. He currently works at the Commissioner’s Office in the NYC Administration for Children’s Services.

Restoring The Republic: A Conservative Manifesto For America’S Future, Cameron Khansarinia

Compass: An Undergraduate Journal of American Political Ideas

In response to liberal attempts to diverge from many American values and ways, some contemporary conservatives have responded by looking backward to what we used to be. Instead, the conservative project should be to transform us into the nation that we were always supposed to be, a project for which Tocqueville can provide guidance.

Author information: Cameron Khansarinia is a graduate of Harvard College. He studied political theory in the Department of Government and wrote his honors thesis on Alexis de Tocqueville’s contemporary relevance under the advisement of Professor Harvey C. Mansfield.

Three Essays On Welfare Policies In American States: Explaining American Welfare States In The Post-Welfare Reform Era, Hyokyung Kwak

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation consists of three empirical studies that address questions regarding state welfare policy making in the post-welfare reform era. The first empirical study pays close attention to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) as a federal block grant program, which is a big departure from most previous TANF studies, to ask why American states differ in their decisions to allocate federal block grants across specific programs. Drawing on research on fiscal federalism and state and cross-national welfare politics, the study uses cross-sectional time-series data covering 50 states over the fiscal years 2004-2016 to examine factors that have an …

The Cultural Politics Of Dan Quayle And Mike Pence, Steve Sanders

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay was part of an Indiana Law Review symposium on the five U.S. vice presidents who have hailed from Indiana.

The Gallup polling organization classifies Indiana as a “pink” state, rather than a “red” state, meaning it leans Republican but is not solidly in the GOP column. Yet, if an image of Indiana persists in many people’s minds as a bastion of social conservatism and tradition, that image likely has been shaped in part by the two most recent vice presidents the Hoosier state has sent to Washington: Dan Quayle and Mike Pence.

In selecting their running mates, major …

Foreign Nations, Constitutional Rights, And International Law, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Sanctions-Busting And The Signing Of New Preferential Trade Agreements And Bilateral Investment Treaties, Yi-Hao Su

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Why does the imposition of sanctions sometimes encourage the signing of new preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs) between target states and their trade partners? I develop the theory that “trade plants the flag” and the argument of “chomping at the BIT” to explain how the trade-based and foreign direct investment (FDI)-based sanctions-busting behavior of firms drives their home governments to sign new PTAs and BITs with target states. The notion that “trade plants the flag” reveals that sanctions-busting firms exercise political influence on governments to reinforce their competitiveness in sanctioned states by concluding the PTA negotiation. …

Foundation For Success : Radical Right Populist Parties' Strategic Use Of The European Parliament, Injeong Hwang

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation examines the role of the European Parliament (EP) on electoral persistence of radical right parties that are marginalized in national politics by focusing on the French Front National (FN) and UK Independence Party (UKIP). The EP has been an alternative political arena for nationally marginalized radical right parties to obtain various political resources because European elections are based on proportional representation system and have a low profile. The EP provided its members with political resources including remunerations, assistants, legitimate status, chances to speak in the EP, and increased visibility.

Bernard Fall And Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare In Indochina, Nathaniel Lawson Moir

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

What accounts for Bernard Fall’s understanding and description of Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare in Indochina? How did formative experiences during and after the Second World War actuate Fall’s thought on the political nature of warfare in Indochina? What distinguished Fall’s thought on revolutionary warfare from others? Bernard Fall and Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare in Indochina addresses these questions through an intellectual history and contextual biography of Bernard Fall’s scholarship on the First and Second Indochina Wars. Bernard Fall, an authority on Vietnamese history, society, and the First Indochina War, began to explain in 1957 that subsequent war in Vietnam could not be …

Adorno's Concept Of The Good : Peaceful Tensions And The Precipice Of Paradise, Sean Mckeever

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Interpretations of Adorno have been dominated by the puzzle of his own theory. The dominant questions center on the internal consistency of his project. Detractors claim that thinking in general and Adorno’s project in particular relies on the same foundations—concepts like instrumental reasoning—that his theory itself seeks to criticize. This means that Adorno himself becomes implicated in his own critique and his entire project is neutered. Many interpreters have sought to come to Adorno’s aid to show that his project is consistent and potent, in part, because it shows us another way of thinking. Proponents of both sides, though, often …

Legislation To Reduce Microplastic Pollution : Understanding The Factors That Facilitated Passage Of The Federal Microbead-Free Waters Act Of 2015, Alyson Kelly Northrup

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The full environmental impacts of microplastic pollution in aquatic environments remain uncertain, but several detrimental effects have been documented, including adverse health effects in multiple species and the susceptibility of microplastics to adsorb toxins and leach plastic additives. Plastic microbeads from rinse-off personal care products are a source of microplastic pollution that is introduced directly into the environment through runoff, including wastewater treatment plant effluent. In December 2015, the federal Microbead-free Waters Act of 2015 banned the manufacture and sale of all rinse-off personal care products containing plastic microbeads in the United States.

The Hot And The Cold : A Historical Explanation For Russia's And America's Contrasting Foreign Policy Approaches To The Arctic, Joshua Newman Caldon

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation explains how and why Russia has expanded its sphere of influence in the Arctic and why the United States has not assertively balanced this expansion. In doing so, I show that regional spheres of influence are historically and socially constructed. While material and security concerns motivate state behavior, I show that states also develop institutions, identities and interests that influence their relationships with each other and cause them to approach regions in different ways that are not readily explained by realist or liberal assumptions of how international relations should work.

Open Secrets, Congressional Oversight, And The Geopolitics Of The Cia Drone Program, Marita C. Murphy

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Analyzing four congressional hearings that publicly discuss the CIA’s ‘secret’ drone program, this thesis considers the interaction between publicity and secrecy in facilitating practices of later-modern warfare. Specifically, I examine the content of these drone hearings within the broader context of leaks, Obama administration speeches, and public interest in CIA drones to better understand how open secrecy engages with public oversight. I argue these hearings are deceptively productive. While they largely fail as oversight events, the hearings facilitate numerous unexpected outcomes—including the normalization and entrenchment of the CIA drone program. Paradoxically then, publicity proves essential to the maintenance and acceptance …

Race Relations And Hate Crimes, Fernando J. Guerra, Brianne Gilbert, Mariya Vizireanu, Alex Kempler

StudyLA Data Briefs

ABOUT THIS STUDY

The 2020 Presidential Primary Election Exit Poll asked LA County voters about whom they voted for in the Presidential and District Attorney Races, how they voted on various measures, their overall voting experience at their respective vote centers, and what their opinions were on a few questions. The following data brief reports on questions related to public opinion on changes in race relations over the past four years.

The data brief consists of two sections:

(1) toplines for the questions, and (2) crosstabs, or each question crossed by respondent demographics.

American Cultural Symbolism Of Rage And Resistance In Collective Trauma: Racially-Influenced Political Myths, Counter-Myths, Projective Identification, And The Evocation Of Transcendent Humanity, Nahanni Freeman

Faculty Publications - Psychology Department

Sociopolitical conflicts in America reveal the latent microcosms of communities, linguistic forms, bodies, and shared cultural narratives, which are driven by polarities and aggression. Considerable political alterity has arisen, promoting dehumanization, prejudice, sexism, and collective trauma as factions war over counter myths that create opposing American stories, including the debate over the role of science, the fusion of religion with politics and material gain, and the nature of truth. Individual psychic and projective events are also represented in sociopolitical events, creating aliens of external communities, promoting objectifying language, and enlisting alienation and dissonance within the self. These darker forces represent …

Connecting The Emerging Markets: China’S Growing Role In Global Digital Infrastructure, Yujia He

Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce Faculty Publications

Rising demand for international communications drive cable capacity growth, yet financing and political risks remain major obstacles. Chinese investments help finance cable systems in multiple emerging market regions. Emerging economies need to develop robust domestic regulations and international coordination to reduce political risks, protect cable infrastructure, and manage cyber risks.

Social Identity, Economic Interest, And The Formation Of Host Attitudes Toward Refugees, Jeremy Cox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Scholarly studies of refugee crises have historically focused on the causes of refugee flight, the experience of the refugees themselves, or the impacts of refugees on host countries. More recently, a growing body of literature has examined the interaction of refugees and host populations, and more specifically the orientations of host individuals toward refugees. This study focuses on attitude formation during refugee crises, seeking to better understand the role of social and economic factors in shaping the attitudes of host populations. The core questions for this study are whether and how social identity and economic considerations relate to attitudes. Original …

The Operational And Administrative Militaries, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

This Article offers a new way to think about the military. In doing so, I argue that there are, in fact, two militaries residing within the Department of Defense (DoD): an “operational” and an “administrative” military.

In Part II, I propose this new two-military analytical framework. This Part begins with a brief historical overview of the dual-military state and argues that these two militaries coexisted in some form since the nation’s founding, grew further apart following World War II and the National Security Act, and effectively separated following the passage of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act.

Part III analyzes the Goldwater-Nichols …

The New Oral Argument: Justices As Advocates, Tonja Jacobi, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

This Article conducts a comprehensive empirical inquiry of fifty-five years of Supreme Court oral argument, showing that judicial activity has increased dramatically, in terms of words used, duration of speech, interruptions made, and comments proffered. The Court is asking no more questions of advocates; instead, the justices are providing conclusions and rebutting their colleagues. In addition, the justices direct more of their comments and questions to the side with whom they ultimately disagree. Furthermore, “losing” justices, be it ideological camps that are outnumbered on the Court or dissenters in specific cases, use oral arguments to push back against the dominant …

Taking Laughter Seriously At The Supreme Court, Tonja Jacobi, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

Laughter in Supreme Court oral arguments has been misunderstood, treated as either a lighthearted distraction from the Court’s serious work, or interpreted as an equalizing force in an otherwise hierarchical environment. Examining the more than nine thousand instances of laughter witnessed at the Court since 1955, this Article shows that the Justices of the Supreme Court use courtroom humor as a tool of advocacy and a signal of their power and status. As the Justices have taken on a greater advocacy role in the modern era, they have also provoked more laughter.

The performative nature of courtroom humor is apparent …

Judicial Choice Among Cases For Certiorari, Tonja Jacobi, Álvaro Bustos

Faculty Articles

How does the Supreme Court choose among cases to grant cert? In a model with a strategic Supreme Court, a continuum of rule-following lower courts, a set of potential cases for revision, and a distribution of future lower court cases, we show that the Court takes the case that will most significantly shape future lower court case outcomes in the direction that the Court prefers. That is, the Court grants cert to the case with maximum salience. If the Court is rather liberal (or conservative), then the most salient case is that which moves the discretionary range of the legal …

Shareholders United?, Andrew K. Jennings

Faculty Articles

Securities regulation has a way of crossing into other lanes. What public companies do is substantive regulation. How they govern themselves while doing it-or more importantly, how they disclose it-is securities regulation. So it is no surprise that the perennial concern over regulating money in politics should also become a question of federal securities regulation. The Shareholders United Act (the "Act")-passed by the House of Representatives as part of House Bill 1, an early, major piece of legislation in the 116th Congress-does just that. The Act would require that before engaging in political spending, public companies poll shareholders on how …

Women Legislators & Representation Of The Indigenous Interests: The Case Of Mexico, Michelle Muñoz Cisneros

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Elsa Chaney (1979) argued that women legislators in Latin America exhibit a supermadre approach in their legislatures. As a result of this, women legislators are relegated to "less important" committees, such as those dealing with family, children, and social issues. Based on her approach, this Thesis argues that due to gender socialization women legislators create an inclusive political environment in the legislature for minorities and marginalized groups. Specifically, it investigates women legislators' bill initiation behavior regarding the inclusion of indigenous populations' interests. This Thesis analyzes original data gathered from the 2009-2018 Mexican Congress using logistic regression. The findings indicate that …

The New Cold War: Geostrategic Rivalry And A Return To Political Warfare, Mason Connor Shuya

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The current geopolitical climate is one which has seen a renewed state of tensions in the relationship between the United States and the Russian Federation dating to 2014 and Russia's annexation of Ukrainian territory. This current state of geopolitical tensions has led many to question: are we in a state of New Cold War today? If so, today's Cold War may be defined by the advancement of cyber capabilities and the use of propaganda and misinformation. How will this be the defining factor in the New Cold War? Through a comprehensive DIME analysis of the Russian Federation, the United States, …

Snapchat And Civic Engagement Among College Students, Laurie Rice, Kenneth Moffett

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

During the 2016 presidential election cycle, Clinton and Trump used Snapchat as one part of their overall voter outreach and engagement efforts. This portion of their campaign strategy was disproportionately targeted toward younger voters, since those between 18 and 25 comprise a vast portion of Snapchat’s user base. Did their efforts, those of political parties, or those of interest groups on Snapchat produce higher levels of civic engagement among college students? We utilize a survey that we conducted from a college campus in the Midwest in October 2016 to answer this question. Using a series of matching analyses, we discover …