Political Science Commons^™

Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces Prof.

International Dialogue

No abstract provided.

Works Of Love From Russia, Alisa Gorshenina

International Dialogue

This reflective artist’s statement by Alisa Gorshenina (Alice Hualice) intertwines autobiographical narrative with the creative context of four works produced during and after her politically forced displacement from Russia. Gorshenina recounts a lifelong pattern of resisting external pressures—from expectations to relocate for education and career advancement to demands that she flee Russia following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. She frames her continued desire to live in her hometown of Nizhny Tagil as an act of personal agency and a “new language of resistance,” grounded not in state loyalty but in an authentic, non-nationalistic love of place. Increasing censorship, denunciations, canceled …

Introduction And Letter To Firas And Ali, Joanna Zabielska

International Dialogue

In this deeply personal and politically charged epistolary essay, Joanna Zabielska reflects on the intersecting forms of erasure occurring within European cultural institutions and at the continent’s militarized borders. Framed as a letter to two men—Firas and Ali—whom the author met during the humanitarian crisis at the Polish-Belarusian border, the piece recounts their experiences of pushbacks, violence, detention, and survival, contextualizing their stories within a broader critique of European migration regimes. Zabielska juxtaposes this with her account of institutional censorship in Austria, where the names of the two men were removed from her VR installation Über das Neue at Belvedere …

Fragments, Najlaa Attaallah

International Dialogue

In Fragments (شظايا), Najlaa Attaallah offers a poetic, intimate, and devastating meditation on exile, trauma, and the unrelenting violence endured by Palestinians in Gaza. Written from Reykjavík yet emotionally tethered to her homeland, Attaallah narrates the psychic rupture caused by witnessing war from afar—the guilt of safety, the suffocating pull of memory, and the sense of existing as “a body without certainty.” Across lyrical vignettes, she explores the collapse of ordinary life under the weight of collective horror: sleeplessness, paralysis, obsessive monitoring of news, and the disintegration of routine maternal roles. The text moves between present anguish and childhood …

Political Discoveries In A Žižek Substack Project Critical Digital Studies, Edward Sankowski, Betty J. Harris

International Dialogue

This review essay analyzes Slavoj Žižek’s recent turn to Substack as a publishing platform, examining both his motivations and the philosophical and political implications of this medium for contemporary critical theory. Sankowski and Harris argue that Žižek’s Substack writings continue long-standing themes in his work—anti-capitalism, ecological crisis, updated Communism, and the cultural dimensions of ideology—while also revealing notable shifts, including heightened pessimism about historical progress and new reflections on environmental catastrophe. The authors assess the advantages and pitfalls of Substack for intellectual discourse, including its circumvention of traditional editorial “censorship,” its contribution to information glut, and its role in fostering …

Of The Freedom Famine In Palestine, Ibtisam Barakat

International Dialogue

In this searing essay, poet and author Ibtisam Barakat bears witness to what she names the “Freedom Famine” in Gaza—a deliberate, decades-long deprivation of basic human rights culminating in the catastrophic conditions of 2025. Writing from the United States while in conversation with Gazan author Omar Hammash, Barakat juxtaposes their drastically unequal realities: her safety and his daily encounters with death, displacement, and starvation. Through Hammash’s testimony—delivered amid constant bombardment and interrupted by news of a friend’s killing—Barakat documents the collapse of Gaza’s infrastructure, the mass targeting of aid workers, the lethal failures of international relief, and the killing of …

Dear Belvedere, Rabbya Naseer

International Dialogue

In this powerful open letter—originally delivered as a video message—artist Rabbya Naseer explains her decision to cancel her 2025 solo exhibition at Belvedere 21 after the museum refused to allow her proposed works addressing Palestine, colonialism, and contemporary violence. Framed as both personal testimony and institutional critique, the letter meditates on the ethics of waiting, perseverance (sabr), and the responsibility of artists amid geopolitical crisis. Naseer recounts months of stalled communication and escalating curatorial restrictions that ultimately rendered any engagement with the Israel–Palestine conflict “not possible.” Rejecting the museum’s demands for neutrality, depoliticization, and the substitution of existing …

The Impact Of Colonization On The Political Development Of Colonized Nations Post-Independence: The French Colonization Of Lebanon, Mariam Faleh

Honors Theses

Colonization is characterized in literature through the lens of the colonizer, defined primarily by its successes. From the discovery of the New World by Columbus in 1492 to the establishment of the United States of America by the EU, spread of democracy across the globe, and its association with the idea of globalization, colonization is seen as the pioneer of the modern world. While colonization has played a large role in the development of the world as we know it, paving the way for the success of many independent nations, it has also simultaneously hindered the development of many. This …

Where Does The Belt Belong? Examining If The Indiana Southern Baptist Convention Belongs In America's "Bible Belt", Abigail N. Fulton

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

America is known for its Bible Belt, a region known for conservative, fundamentalist Protestantism in the southeast portion of the United States. Though this conservative culture is often associated with the south and their history of conservative politics and racial discrimination, there lies a question of if the Bible Belt is geographically limited or dependent more on culture, history, and the politics within this setting. The Indiana Southern Baptist Convention holds a highly conservative viewpoint on Christian religion, similarly to the southeast portion of the U.S., as well as a controversial history with racism and politics that is linked to …

Sustainability Policy Proposals For The Township Of Montclair, Nj, Fanny Lauby, Josemy Barrera Cabal, Aaron Chauhan, Chase Geer, Carlos Jimenez, Catherine Khitiri, Jonathan Lockette, Andrew Mapes, Coral Mejía, Jack Nacht, Gabriella O’Keefe, Refia Oral, Sanjeev Rao, Jacob Roby, Julnide Saint Juste, Fiona Slatina

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This white paper was written as a course requirement for POLS 324 Advanced Public Policy Analysis at Montclair State University in fall 2025. In the course, students analyze public policy and examine current issues. Public policy analysis can be defined as the development and evaluation of policy solutions to public problems. The course's learning objectives include “critically evaluate the goals and assumptions of different policy proposals,” “create a policy proposal for a public problem,” and “evaluate the proposals developed by their peers.” For the fall 2025 iteration of the course, I invited two offices in the township of Montclair to …

From Parallel Beginnings To Divergent Destinies: A Comparative Study Of China’S State-Led Liberalization Growth And Pakistan’S Dependency Trap, Safeer Ahmad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the development trajectories of China and Pakistan, which shared a similar colonial legacy and hampered economic, political, and social conditions at the time of their establishment in the mid-20th century. However, despite these similarities, the former is a global power, and the latter is still struggling to project a sustained development approach in the 21st century. This research addresses this divergent outcome by using a comparative approach to analyze the institutional, economic, and policy decisions of both countries that eventually shaped their contemporary position and role in the international community. China’s reformation period under a centralized government …

How Presidents Shift Ideological Stances In Legislative Elections: Evidence From South Korean Presidential Speeches, Doyeon Park

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Presidents have a strong desire to lead their parties to victory in elections. However, relatively little attention has been paid to their ideological stances in legislative elections. This contrasts with extensive research on the ideological strategies of parties and candidates who directly compete for office. How do presidents adjust their ideological positions in legislative elections? This study examines the institutional dynamics surrounding presidents, focusing on their dual responsibilities and the role of legislative elections as a referendum on the presidency. It also considers presidential popularity as a factor that influences these dynamics. I argue that presidents are more likely to …

Design And Testing Of A Vr Escape Room Game For Philippine Martial Law History, Eric Cesar Vidal, Jr., Jesus Alvaro Pato, Johanna Marion R. Torres, Kenneth King L. Ko

Institute of Philippine Culture (IPC)

This paper presents a Virtual Reality Educational Escape Room game where players learn about the highly divisive Martial Law period in Philippine history. We describe the game’s general design and the results of a user test to evaluate the game in terms of VR presence, immersion, and overall usability.

Design And Testing Of A Vr Escape Room Game For Philippine Martial Law History, Eric Cesar Vidal, Jr., Johanna Marion R. Torres, Jesus Alvaro Pato, Kenneth King L. Ko

Department of Information Systems & Computer Science Faculty Publications

This paper presents a Virtual Reality Educational Escape Room game where players learn about the highly divisive Martial Law period in Philippine history. We describe the game’s general design and the results of a user test to evaluate the game in terms of VR presence, immersion, and overall usability.

Overcoming Title 42 And The 2022-3 Venezuelan Migrant Expulsion Spectacle: A Border Securocracy Case Study, Terence M. Garrett, Arthur Sementelli

School of Political Science, Public Affairs, Legal and Security Studies Faculty Publications

On October 12, 2022, the Biden administration abruptly changed course and announced that Venezuelan refugees would be immediately subject to Title 42—the policy that effectively means that those migrants would be summarily forced to return, or expelled, to Mexico. For FY 2022, Customs and Border Protection apprehended and/or expelled a total of 2,766,582 enforcement actions (CBP FY 2022). The resulting media spectacle illustrates another example of border securocracy—defined as the globalized border industrial apparatus oppressing the masses from the global south. We construct a case study based on Boje's narrative approach to illustrate how guided discussions of Title 42 …

The Personality Profile Of U.S. Vice President Jd Vance, Aubrey Immelman, Logan Butler

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an indirect personality assessment of U.S. vice president JD Vance, from the conceptual perspective of personologist Theodore Millon.

Psychodiagnostically relevant data relating to Vance were collected from biographical sources and media reports and synthesized into a personality profile using the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with DSM-III-R, DSM-IV, and DSM-5-TR.

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed in accordance with interpretive guidelines provided in the MIDC and Millon Index of Personality Styles manuals. Vance’s primary personality patterns were found …

Media Bias Explained: Its Impact On Political Opinions, Janae Joachim

Senior Honors Theses

Even though the media does not maliciously warp public opinion, it can distort the public understanding of reality. Journalists desire to educate the people but are powerless against their own bias. Complicating matters is that they recklessly seek to increase engagement, exacerbating political polarization and a negative view of government. Factual reporting is more important with the rise of social media as a news source because Gen-Z’s political opinions are informed by social applications. While media bias existed before social media, it now remains mostly unchecked. Political reporters must be cognizant of the impact they have on voters and subsequently …

Privacy Rights: Their Evolution, Expansion, And Narrowing, Rebecca Nichole Ivans

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Privacy rights in the United States have evolved significantly through judicial interpretation, with reproductive rights playing a central role in their expansion and contraction. This paper examines how the Supreme Court's treatment of reproductive rights has shaped the broader understanding of constitutional privacy rights, focusing on landmark cases from Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) to Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022).

The analysis begins by exploring how the Court first established privacy rights through "penumbras" found within various constitutional amendments, particularly in Griswold's protection of contraceptive access for married couples. The paper traces the expansion of these rights through subsequent …

Between Hard And Soft Power: A Historical Analysis Of U.S. Defense Diplomacy, Shuhei Takahashi

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

In recent years, countries around the world—those of Europe but also Japan, China, and Russia—have accelerated their efforts to use military assets as instruments of diplomacy. This trend has contributed to the rising prevalence of the term “defense diplomacy” in national security discourse. The United States is no exception. Its abundant military assets and its global network of bases clearly demonstrate that it is the world’s leading practitioner of defense diplomacy. Yet the United States lacks a clear strategic document outlining the concept. Moreover, because existing definitions remain theoretically ambiguous and methods for assessing the effectiveness of defense diplomacy initiatives …

Alexander Asboth: Hungarian Separatist And Union Civil War General, Paul T. Brueske

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This thesis reveals the experiences of a Hungarian Separatist, Alexander Asboth, and how he applied those experiences in the American Civil War. It examines Asboth’s biography, his expansive view of the Union, and how he differed from many commanding officers in the Western theater. Moreover, this thesis illuminates Asboth’s military service, including his leadership of a diverse force at Barrancas, Florida, and adds to the understudied collaboration of foreign-born officers and Black soldiers in Gulf Coast Civil War history.

During the 1848 Hungarian separatist movement, Asboth served as an Army staff officer under the leader Lajos Kossuth. However, the separatists …

Imagine The Peace: Exploring The Intimacy Of Imagined Intergroup Contact In Kosovo, Eric Manley

Dissertations

Peacebuilders have utilized positive intergroup contact in various settings to help groups encounter each other. I implemented three different intimate imagined contact scenarios in Peja, Kosovo with Albanian and Serb participants. I conducted this research to understand how multiple intimate social settings could impact individuals’ encounters with the outgroup during each imagined scenario, thus gathering better operationalization efforts regarding intimacy and imagined contact. Using written responses, interviews, and one-year follow-up interviews, the café and workplace scenarios created a positive experience for most participants, and while half of participants had a positive experience with the fiancé scenario, many more had negative …

Understanding Executive Order 13583’S Impact To Federal Workforce Diversity & Employee Perception Of Federal Policies And Programs, Michael Robert Arenella

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Creating a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DE&I) workforce produces beneficial organizational outcomes, such as decreased turnover, improved creativity and innovation, and improved organizational performance (Diaz-Garcia et al., 2013; Gomez & Bernet, 2019; McLeod et al., 1996; Singh & Selvarjan, 2013). While the private sector has placed much emphasis on improving DE&I in their hiring practices, whether the federal government has achieved comparable outcomes remains unclear. Guided by the punctuated equilibrium theory (PET), this dissertation examines the impact of Executive Order 13583 on both change in workforce composition, and employee sentiment towards diversity policies and programs.

Using a multi-level, multi-method, …

Policymaker Receptivity To Corporate Political Activity As Influenced By Activists, Mark E. Bateman

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation considers the role of shareholder resolutions and employee strikes as representations of activist activities targeting corporations and their influence on corporate political activity (CPA). The study builds from the McDonnell and Werner (2016) study in Administrative Science Quarterly, “Blacklisted businesses: Social activists’ challenges and the disruption of corporate political activity” that assessed the role of consumer boycotts vis-à-vis CPA. Starting with the political marketplace framework, introducing the policy relationship framework, and using signal theory, the dissertation found some support that shareholder resolutions and employee strikes related to increases in PAC refunds, that temporal issue salience to the …

A Certainty-Weighted, Belief-Based Model Of Political Attitudes: A Bayesian Analysis Of American Public Attitudes Toward The Affordable Care Act, Gabriel Miao Li, Josh Pasek, Jon A. Krosnick

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

This study proposes a novel, certainty-weighted account of the process by which political beliefs shape political attitudes. Building upon expectancy-value frameworks, this paper introduces belief certainty as a moderator of belief impact. A Bayesian partial-pooling approach is used to test a model positing how beliefs about what the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act does and does not do relate to overall attitudes toward the law. This analytic method manages the complexity of multiple potentially correlated beliefs and evaluations by imposing a structural constraint to avoid multicollinearity and enable accurate estimation of parameters. Data from a nationally representative sample survey …

The Seed That Begot America: How Political Principles Of The Reformation Contributed To The American Founding, Gabriel Stisser

Senior Honors Theses

When teaching the American founding, the contemporary public-school curriculum tends to emphasize the influence of the thinkers from the antiquity and Enlightenment periods. However, the curriculum tends to neglect the impact that the Reformation had upon America's formation. Through a qualitative historical review, this study will analyze both primary and secondary sources to examine how Reformed ideals of the political covenant, limited government, and resistance to tyranny influenced the American founding. This analysis finds that the Reformed (sometimes called Calvinist) political ideals from the Reformation had a significant influence upon the formation of the New England colonies, the enlightenment figures …

Immigration And The U.S. Economy Under Obama And Trump, Eliz Gevorgian

Political Science Student Research

This paper examines the economic effects of the United States' immigration policy under President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump. Between 2009 and 2017, the Obama administration introduced programs such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and expanded access to student and work visas. These actions coincided with steady GDP growth averaging about 2 percent per year and a decline in unemployment from 9.9 percent in 2009 to 4.7 percent in 2016. The Trump administration, in office from 2017 to 2021, implemented more restrictive immigration measures, including the 2017 travel ban, reduced refugee admissions, increased H1B visa scrutiny, and …

Notes For Contributors, Editors Space And Defense

Space and Defense

No abstract provided.

Review Article: International Relations: State Of The Field. Paul R. Viotti’S Kenneth Waltz: An Intellectual Biography (Ny: Columbia University Press, 2023)., Damon Coletta

Space and Defense

In this review essay, Damon Coletta examines Paul R. Viotti’s Kenneth Waltz: An Intellectual Biography (Columbia University Press, 2023), positioning it as both a tribute to and a reexamination of one of International Relations’ most influential theorists. Viotti, a former student of Waltz, reconstructs the intellectual development of structural realism—tracing its philosophical and methodological roots from Man, the State, and War (1959) to Theory of International Politics (1979)—while situating Waltz’s scholarship within the geopolitical and academic transformations of the Cold War era. Coletta highlights Viotti’s skillful balance between biography and disciplinary analysis, showing how Waltz’s systemic approach to international politics …

Review Article: Monetary Power And National Security. A 10th Anniversary Review Of Paul R. Viotti’S The Dollar And National Security: The Monetary Component Of Hard Power (Stanford, Ca: Stanford University Press, 2014), Ricardo Crespo

Space and Defense

In this ten-year retrospective, Ricardo A. Crespo reassesses Paul R. Viotti’s The Dollar and National Security (2014) as a foundational text bridging the fields of monetary policy and national security. Viotti’s central thesis—that military power ultimately depends on a stable and privileged monetary foundation—has only grown more relevant amid today’s weaponization of finance and the geopolitics of sanctions. Crespo highlights Viotti’s argument that sustaining the U.S. dollar’s global dominance requires cooperative security and international consensus, noting how historical parallels—from the sterling gold standard to Bretton Woods—illustrate the fragility of monetary hegemony under fiscal mismanagement or political fragmentation. The review situates …

Plan To Fail By Failing To Plan: Deterring Prc Nuclear Force Expansion, Mark Tang, Grace Buettner

Space and Defense

This article argues that the United States must adapt its nuclear deterrence strategy to counter the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) accelerating nuclear force expansion. As Beijing seeks to achieve nuclear parity with Washington—projecting up to 1,500 warheads by 2035—the authors contend that U.S. strategy must evolve from Cold War-era models to meet the Indo-Pacific’s unique strategic challenges. They propose the establishment of a Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) A-10 Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration Division, modeled after its European counterpart, to enhance regional nuclear planning, integration, and allied assurance. The paper emphasizes the concept of escalation domination, arguing …