Political Science Commons^™

A Case Study: Socialism In Venezuela, Victoria Matlock

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

How News Media Influences Foreign Policy Through Public Opinion, Elizabeth Ayowole

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

Russian Disinformation: A Threat To Unity In America, Nicole Wellington

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

U.S. Warfare Within The Fifth Domain: Deterring Russian Cyber Aggression, Dominick Namias, Jacob Chace

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

Liberty And Justice For All: A Case Study Of The Lekki Tollgate Killings, Ikenna Nwobu

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

Human rights violations and the vigor in delivering justice as the constitution demands have been a significant issue in Nigerian history as a Nation, because of its history as a Nation that has had different kinds of military rule and dictatorship in its past system of government. The creation of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), as a sub-division of the Nigerian police force that has the most technical tactics and training to handle severe crimes that are gang crimes, robbery related crimes had over the years had violated and had neglected its job in curbing crimes. This has led to …

Great Men Are Almost Always Bad Men: The Cultural Revolution Of The Techno-Totalitarians, Gregory S. Mckenzie

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

Reformation Within The Nation: Adapting The Nordic Rehabilitation And Reintegration Model To Positively Recondition The United States Criminal Justice System, Jessica Cornell

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

An analytical and statistical based comparison of criminal sentencing, incarceration, rehabilitation and reintegration in the United States of America to those of the five countries which follows those of the Nordic Criminal Justice System.

Abortion And Child Sexual Exploitation: Abortion As A Tool Of Traffickers And Abusers, Gabrielle Tornow

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

An examination of how child sexual abusers use abortion as a tool to exert control over their victims and cover up the evidence of their crimes

Breaking The 'Cis' Binary: Examining The Role Model Effect Among Cisgender Women And Transgender And Gender Non-Conforming Individuals, Elizabeth A. Diamanduros

Honors College Theses

While recent strides have been made regarding more transgender and gender non-conforming individuals (TGNC) running for and being elected to political office in the United States, only 64 individuals who identify as part of the community are currently serving elected office (LGBTQ Victory Institute 2021). Though cisgender women have also faced political underrepresentation, higher rates of cisgender women have campaigned for and won elected office at all levels of government in recent years. Previous research illustrates the differences between the political and societal situations of these groups, including drawing attention to the elements of visibility and viability the Role Model …

Egyptian Defence Programmes And Their Impact On Social And Economic Development Of Egypt, Nazli Madkour

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Deterioration Of The Tenth Amendment: Why Federalism’S Hierarchy Must Be Restored, Giana Depaul

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

Critical Thinking In The Age Of Misinformation: Information Literacy For Citizenship, Tamra Ortgies-Young, Jennfer Lobo Meeks, Barbara Robertson

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

As recent political events across the globe have shed a light on the fragility of democratic values, the role of the University in creating a framework for civic education becomes more urgent. Informed, caring and engaged citizenry must be a goal of higher education. Students currently face the emergence of faulty types of information - such as misinformation and disinformation, which undermines the notion of collective or public inquiry, not only within universities, but also within society as a whole. This challenge must be acknowledged and addressed by academic institutions.

Session presenters will provide an overview of their work, “Critical …

Democracy And Its Discontents: The Years Of Lead And The Burdens Of History, Sohan Mewada

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

Extremist narratives are diffuse, and mistrust of political institutions is ubiquitous in the United States. Extremist ideas espousing violent means to gain recognition and legitimacy are more common in mainstream culture. This is the United States now, but it is also Italy sixty years prior. This project uses various archival materials to explore the two decades from 1960 to 1980 defined by cycles of widespread extremism, social fracturing, and domestic terror known in Italian history as The Years of Lead. Applying this case to the United States’ current circumstances, this project argues that a democracy with the prestige of the …

Religion Vs. Politics: Which Wins At A Christian Liberal Arts University?, Amanda Williams

Political Studies Student Projects

Scholars have studied the effects of framing on different groups of people for decades. There has also been research on the relationship between religious beliefs and politics. This article takes the unique population of a Christian college campus to combine the test of faith against politics through subtle framing. When faced with a political frame, will these Christians ultimately side with their political beliefs or their religious beliefs? I found through a questionnaire experiment run in November 2021 on Taylor University students and some faculty that religious beliefs prevailed. This result is somewhat surprising giving the current political climate, but …

The Impact Of Partisan Media On Individual Voting Habits​, Michael Miller, Julia Frontz

Celebration of Scholarship 2022

Politics and news media are very connected to each other. Many people get mad at news sites for what they report or how they report it, but how much of an effect does news have on politics? We decided to test and see how much the type of news that people watch affects the way that they vote. We looked at which news people watched and how they voted in national elections, and we found that there is little to no evidence to show that there is any impact of news on people’s voting.

The Twin Yosemite Meetings Of John Muir: Ralph Waldo Emerson And Theodore Roosevelt, Russell Knapp

Phi Alpha Theta Conference at Taylor University

The two parallel visitations from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Roosevelt to John Muir and the different relationships that resulted illustrate two extremes in Muir’s life, the excited dreamer who was influenced by Emerson, and the accomplished conservationist who influenced Roosevelt.

Dark Faces In White Spaces: The Effects Of Skin Tone, Race, Ethnicity, And Intergroup Preferences On Interpersonal Judgments And Voting Behavior, Patrizia Chirco, Tonya M. Buchanan

Student Published Works

Across three experimental studies, we explored how a political candidate's intersections of skin tone, race, and ethnicity affect voting preferences and interpersonal judgments (e.g., warmth, trustworthiness, expertise). Study 1 assessed whether White participants would favor a light-skinned (vs. dark-skinned) African American candidate. Study 2 investigated participant (White vs. non-White) voting preferences based on the interaction between candidate race/ethnicity and relative skin tone (lighter vs. darker). In Study 3, we examined the influence of candidate race/ethnicity on voters’ preferences as well as the accuracy and impact of memory for candidate skin tone. Supporting our hypotheses, White participants generally held more negative …

State Governments That Champion Renewable Energy, And Why, Xanthe Plymale

Library Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research

As of 2020, more than 75% of Americans believe that the U.S. should prioritize developing alternative energy sources to fossil fuels. Despite this, there has been relatively little action at the federal level to expand and encourage renewable energy in the U.S., resulting in decentralized, bottom-up renewables promotion across the states. This project seeks to explain why some U.S. state legislatures have energy policies that promote the development of renewables and ease the connection of renewable energy sources to the electric grid. These explanations yield results on how renewable energy can be championed at the federal, and even global, level. …

The American Congress Digital Archives Portal Project White Paper, Danielle Emerling

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This white paper documents the work of the American Congress Digital Archives Portal project to aggregate congressional archives into a single, online platform and make them more broadly available. Congressional archives document the democratic process; the development of public policy; and multiple narratives related to the country’s social, cultural, and political development. Work of the project included developing standards and best practices; creating governance structures for the one-year project and future phases; developing a web portal that meets user needs and adding archival content; determining digitization priorities via a research survey; conducting usability testing; and communicating and publicizing the project. …

International Relations Textbooks And The Problem Of International Order, Stephen A. Kocs

Political Science Department Faculty Scholarship

The establishment and maintenance of order—that is, of settled rules and arrangements that regulate actors’ behavior—is central to politics at all levels, including the international level. Political order, after all, is a requisite for modern human existence. Given the priority of the problem of order, the most important questions that can be addressed in an introductory International Relations (IR) course are those that concern the sources, nature, and historical evolution of international order. But a survey of conventional introductory IR textbooks reveals that these questions are typically dealt with glancingly or ignored altogether. Thus a strong case can be made …

Taking The Bull By The Horns: Gender Analysis In A Cattle Project In Indonesia, Febrina Prameswari

Sustainability and Social Justice

Women play a crucial role in agriculture, especially in cattle farming. However, gender inequality in livestock production remains a critical issue, as women usually have less engagement with livestock production, less control over finances, and less access to markets. The IndoBeef program in Indonesia was one of the first livestock projects to incorporate gender-specific activities in its implementation. The project used women-only focus groups, utilizing the Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index (WELI) combined with farm production data to address women’s needs in the cattle industry. I conducted a gender analysis of one of IndoBeef’s subsidiary projects, CropCow. The project did …

People Remember Liked Political Policies As Having Been Attributed To Their Own Party, Dalton Thomas Bailey

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A robust finding in psychology shows that people tend to like information more when it supports their existing beliefs, or comes from their own ingroup, a finding known as motivated reasoning. These findings are especially prominent in a political context. Quite consistently, research suggests people increase their liking of political information like political policies when they are attributed to their own party. What is unknown, however, is if people also tend to attribute personally liked information to their own party. These studies were conducted to investigate this question.

Two, within-subjects studies were conducted. In both, participants (undergraduate students) saw various …

Don’T Tilt My Crown: The Impact Of Hair Discrimination On Minorities, Constance Young

2022 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents

Hair discrimination is a significant issue that has not been given adequate attention nor the proper application of legislation to combat it across the United States. It is currently disproportionally impacting minorities, especially minority women, as it is not only emotionally and mentally damaging to them, but it can lead to health issues as well. This research will further analyze what causes some states to endorse anti-hair discrimination policies as opposed to others. I believe there are many common factors amongst states that have passed laws related to this issue, and that these factors are main indicators of why other …

The Political Obstruction Of Anti-Lynching Policy, Jerimiah Boyd-Johnson

2022 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents

United States House of Representative Bobby Rush from Illinois’s District 1 proposed the Emmitt Till Anti-Lynching Act (H.R.35 - 116th Congress 2019-2020). This Act would classify lynching as a federal hate crime. This act has been passed through the House of Representatives but was blocked in the Senate by Rand Paul. This is not a new phenomenon. Anti-Lynching legislation has been repeatedly blocked in the United States Senate. As reported by congressional findings, on all three occasions where anti-lynching legislation would be passed the opposing party argued states' rights, threatened to use the filibuster, or used the filibuster. This research …

Terrorism: The Case Of Donbas And Ukraine, Noelle C. Chubb

2022 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents

In 2014, the Crimean Peninsula was pseudo-legally annexed by the Russian Federation after months of internal turmoil (the “Euromaidan crisis”) that ousted then-President Viktor Yanukovych. This crisis, which began in November 2013, would turn into the most intense conflict in Eastern Europe since the Russian Federation was formed in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union. The annexation, along with the declaration of independence by the oblasts of Donetsk and Lugansk would see several non-state actors (notably the People’s Republic of Donetsk, the People’s Republic of Lugansk, and Cossack Separatists) rise in opposition to the pro-Western forces in …

“Who Runs The World? Girls!” A Case Study On The Role That Stacey Abrams Has Played In Changing The African American Political Voice And American Political Realm As A Whole, Kyler Wiltz

2022 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents

Stacey Abrams is one of the most prominent up-and-coming politicians in America. From her controversial gubernatorial race in 2018 to her post-election voting rights efforts, she is consistently at the forefront of many political discussions and debates. Nonetheless, with all this notoriety, there has not been much research on her life and impact relative to her peers or predecessors. What makes Stacey Abrams as popular and accepted as she is to the public? How is she the same as other American politicians, both male, and female? Who is Stacey Abrams? This study focuses on answering these questions through a case …

Trust In Government And The Ideological Center Of The American Public, Madison Crenshaw

[Archive] Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

In the age of extreme political polarization, the American public stands more divided and more distrustful of government than ever before. Although polarization continues to persist, the average ideological center of the American public has continued to move to the left as distrust has continued to fall. This paper looks to establish a significant relationship between the American public's trust levels and the average ideological center of the American public from 1994-2017. By analyzing survey data means from Pew Research Center, this paper hopes to determine the influence of the ideological center on levels of trust in the American Public.

Coronavirus In America; Have Partisan Politics Permeated The Pandemic?, Annabelle G. Macrae

[Archive] Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

What level of influence do the actions and rhetoric of governors have on constituents' response to vaccination? In this paper, I analyze how the rhetoric of governors and their efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic has influenced the progression of coronavirus vaccination amongst their constituents. If governors take significant statewide steps and mitigation measures to combat coronavirus and vigorously enforce and advocate for vaccines, those who are of the same political party will become more opinionated in favor of vaccination, and those of opposite parties will become more resistant to vaccination.

Extremism And Its Effects On Idaho Legislation, Steve D. Sutherland

IPS/BAS 495 Undergraduate Capstone Projects

The Capstone Project covers, through documented interviews and insights, practitioners, journalists, and researchers that have endeavored to recognize and reconcile the effects of extremism in Idaho legislation. The referenced articles and academic journals also shed light on how this is not unique to the Gem State and how it is manifesting and evolving within the United States. This paper describes my approaches to researching this topic and the challenges of its polarization and political realities. I cover how creating an innovative approach can bring together different perspectives. Emotional intelligence is vital in exploring a hot-button issue such as this. Awareness …

Helms School Of Government Newsletter - Spring 2022, Liberty University

The Helms School of Government Newsletter

Helms School of Government Newsletter - Spring 2022