Political Science Commons^™

Clearing The Field: How Do Presidential Primary Candidates Win Big On Super Tuesday?, Colin D. Swearingen

2020 Faculty Bibliography

In presidential primaries, Super Tuesday elections play a significant role in winnowing candidate fields and establishing nomination frontrunners. Despite their importance, scholars know little about why and how candidates win or lose the states comprising these events. This study explores which factors help explain candidate performance in Super Tuesday primaries between 2008 and 2016. Using pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis, the results indicate three key drivers of Super Tuesday success: candidate viability, public attention, and media attention. These findings imply that presidential campaigns continue to be complex electoral events beyond the early primary states and suggest that underdog candidates can still …

2020 Forecast La Conference Book, Fernando J. Guerra, Brianne Gilbert, Mariya Vizireanu, Alejandra Alarcon, Jorge Cortes, Vishnu Akella, Max Dunsker

Forecast LA

No abstract provided.

Keeping Faith With Nomos, Steven L. Winter

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Climate Refugees: Can States Survive The Changing Climate?, Caroline Sisson

Featured Research

No abstract provided.

Untitled, Michayla George

Debate Essay Winners

2nd Place Winner - High School Division

Michayla George

Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet High School

Catch Me If You Can: Using A Threshold Model To Simulate Support For Presidential Candidates In The Invisible Primary, Elizabeth A. Stiles, Colin D. Swearingen, Linda Seiter, Brendan Foreman

2020 Faculty Bibliography

The invisible primary is an important time in United States Presidential primary politics as candidates gain momentum for their campaigns before they compete formally in the first state caucus (Iowa) and primaries (e.g. New Hampshire). This critical period has not been possible to observe, hence the name. However, by simulating networks of primary followers, we can explicate hypotheses for how messages travel through networks to affect voter preferences. To do so, we use a threshold model to drive our simulated network analysis testing spread of public support for candidates in invisible primaries. We assign voter thresholds for candidates and vary …

Ramerican Political Science Review (Vol. 5, 2020)

Ramerican Political Science Review

Letter from the Department of Political Science -- Analyzing the Accuracy of Early Warning Systems in the Field of Modern Genocide and Suggested Changes: A Comparative Case Study of Myanmar, Rwanda, and Darfur / Jhanys Gardner -- The Chicken Game and the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis / Zhuoran Li -- The Impact of VP Nominees: An Overview of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election / W.P. Jackson Krug -- The FMLN and FARC as Diverging Models of Post-Conflict Integration / Adam Hales -- Censorship and Control in the PRC / Robert Johnson -- Perpetual Neglect: An insight into the implications of …

A Comparative Analysis Of Institutional Trust, Traditional Social Values, And Partisanship In East And Southeast Asia, Lucas Knight

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

What factors drive an individual to trust, or not trust, their government? Over the past two decades, an extensive literature has developed that seeks to identify the sources and determinants of institutional trust in East and Southeast Asia. While this literature has solidified around several factors, for example, positive evaluations of economic performance or anti-corruption efforts, there is still significant debate on the importance of others. This study seeks to contribute to this ongoing debate by testing the role of traditionalism or traditional social values and partisanship. Utilizing data on 13 countries from Wave 4 of the Asian Barometer Survey …

First Past The Poll: A Blog About Political Statistics, Bradley Wascher

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This Capstone Experience project details my efforts to become a political data journalist. I took the first major step in August 2018, starting First Past the Poll, my politics blog. For three semesters, this website was frequently updated with nonpartisan reports on the latest elections, deep dives on long-term polling trends, and commentary on political numbers more broadly. Hoping to buck the trend of the stodgy prose prevalent throughout politics, my stories combined academic rigor with accessible writing.

As I began to find my footing in the field, First Past the Poll put me in the position to become …

Geographic And Partisan Patterns Of Support For Electoral Reforms, Aubrey Kelley

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Electoral reform has become a hotly debated issue, and it has recently been in the news at federal and state levels. On the federal level, the House of Representatives recently passed an electoral reform bill to expand early voting and allow for same-day voter registration. On the state level, Kentucky has become one of the most recent states to implement photo identification requirements. Georgia’s strict voter registration system became a subject of deep controversy during the most recent gubernatorial election. Throughout the past couple of decades, electoral reform has been tackled in a variety of different ways; some states have …

Factors Contributing To Continuing Democratic Victories In Some Southern House Districts, 1994–2008, Dillon Mccormick

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The American South went through a period of political transition in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This transition reached its climax after the 1994 elections, after which Democrats ceased to hold the majority of House seats in the South, never to regain that strength. However, Democrats continued to win a decent share of House seats in the South after 1994, with about 40% of Southern House seats being won by Democrats until the 2010 elections, after which Democrats shrunk to a much smaller minority.

This paper analyzes the factors that allowed some Democrats to continue to be elected …

"Family Values Don't Stop At The Rio Grande..." : Can The Republican Party Convert Hispanic Voters?, Donald Davison

Faculty Publications

As the Hispanic community becomes increasingly important in American politics there are competing views about whether they can be converted to the Republican Party. One perspective argues that Hispanics’ religion and traditional social values makes them natural constituents of the Republican Party. Alternatively, Hispanics are primarily concerned about issues promoting their well-being, while topics such as moral values or religion are private. I use a novel approach to test whether traditional social values might attract Hispanic voters to the Republican Party. Using exit poll results for ballot propositions on moral issues from Arizona, Colorado, and Florida I find weak evidence …

Lewisburg Shade Tree Commission: Tree Inventory Repair, Community Awareness, And Policy Recommendations, Jiaxuan Zhao, Brian Gockley

Student Project Reports

No abstract provided.

Trade And Power Transition Wars, Conor Sullivan

Honors Program Theses

This paper examines whether or not international trade can be depended on to prevent power transition wars, with a focus on the current transition between the US and China. The literature on power transitions and on trade’s impact on international wars is reviewed, and a method established for determining whether a neoliberal or neorealist understanding of the impact of trade is more appropriate in the current transition. This method employs a model for predicting states’ trade policies to see whether its predictions are accurate both before and after the rise of complex economic interdependence in the 1970s. If the same …

C-Dem Annual Report 2020, Allison Harell, Laura Stephenson

Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Does Canada Meet International Standards On Employment Rights For Migrant Workers? An Analysis Of The Effects Of Labour Market Inequality, Ria Haque

MA Major Research Papers

The goal of this paper is to carefully assess the international standards of labour and the effects of the rise in labour market inequality specifically in Canada while also looking at what is going on in China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as case studies. By analyzing empirical and qualitative data, this paper ultimately concludes that the dominant explanation and interpretation of related literature in this subject depicts a broad sense of injustice to migrant workers who are only increasing internationally. These migrant workers face countless hardships while only pursuing jobs in foreign countries in the attempts of going …

Theories Of Foucault And Agamben: The Issues Of Borders And Sovereignty”, Melinda Ann Callahan

MA Major Research Papers

Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben have developed theoretical lenses for depicting how we should understand individuals in sovereign states, and the way in which these states interact with said individuals. Through an approach that assesses the framework of biology, race and ethnicity contribute to the notions of biopolitics and of ‘bare life,’ and exemplifies the constructs of how discrimination against the ‘other’ is embedded in western thought. These systematic processes are utilized through notions of biopower and the ‘state of exception’ as a means of maintaining hierarchical power structures. This paper will be assessing the role of the international in …

The Effects Of Invasive Border Security Policies On Vulnerable Communities Today, Salena Halbouni

MA Major Research Papers

The following literature review is grounded in a case of a Syrian/Canadian man of the name Maher Arar who was wrongly convicted of having associations with the terrorist group Al-Qaeda.5 The purpose of the case is to highlight flaws within counterterrorism policies and strategies. Despite the government’s attempts at protecting innocent civilians, it has also created many challenges for those in office with respect to protecting civil and human rights. As previously mentioned, in an attempt to overcome such challenges it is essential to implement safeguards within practices, and policies to ensure the protection of the most vulnerable.

The Sino-Lankan Relationship: Challenging Liberal Foundations Of Transitional Justice, Thurka Brabaharan

MA Major Research Papers

Sri Lanka continues to demonstrate the challenges of implementing legitimate transitional justice mechanisms in a post-conflict state ruled by its victors. While the island-nation of Sri Lanka has managed to sustain relative peace for over a decade, the government’s outstanding human rights record remains a concern for the country’s minority ethnic groups. While there is substantial evidence against the Sri Lankan Army to validate the human rights abuses and war crimes alleged by Tamil civilians, little has been done to hold these individuals accountable. Within the sphere of liberal international order, a victor’s peace, such as Sri Lanka’s, would likely …

Communication And Culture: The Role Of Language Policy On Regional Minority Languages In The Reduction Of Political Conflict, Colin Brant

Honors Program Theses

The following thesis looks at the role of linguistic rights and proper language policy for regional minority languages in the reduction of political conflict in developed states. As renewed interest in the maintenance of regional minority languages grew in the second half of the 20th-century states' reactions to this call for linguistic rights, have informed the level of conflict seen with various linguistic minorities. The paper hopes to make a case for a system of rights and protections similar to those presented in the Oslo Recommendations (1998) as an optimal path for the reduction of conflict in developed states by …

Success And Shortcomings: Disarmament, Demobilization, And Reintegration In Eastern And Central Africa, Grace Marshall

Honors Program Theses

In post-conflict transitions, disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration have played a crucial role in the treatment of former combatants and the advancement of peacebuilding. This peacebuilding process, known as DDR, has experienced successes and failures throughout its implementation across the globe. Specifically, as conflict erupted across many nations in Central and Eastern Africa, the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programs that were implemented during different nations’ peacebuilding transition towards at the turn of the twenty first century experienced variations among their success at reducing or halting conflict. This investigation analyzes the factors that contribute to the ability for disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration …

Should Crime Scene Photos Ever Be Deleted?, Jonathan Pelletier

Faculty Publications and Presentations

There are two general opposing positions regarding deleting photographs of a crime scene. In a recent laboratory update (internet based because of COVID-19), the Virginia Department of Forensic Science raised an issue that warrants discussion: “DFS position - Best (and most transparent) practice - any image captured in the course of processing a crime [scene] should be retained, no matter the quality or the intent (or lack thereof, such as an accidental shutter depress [sic])” [1]. With conventional film, this was never an issue. There was no option to delete an image. With digital images, however, the option exists and …

Recognition And Positive Freedom, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

A number of well-known Hegel-inspired theorists have recently defended a distinctive type of social freedom that, while bearing some resemblance to Isaiah Berlin’s famous description of positive freedom, takes its bearings from a theory of social recognition rather than a theory of moral self-determination. Berlin himself argued that recognition-based theories of freedom are really not about freedom at all (negatively or positively construed) but about solidarity, More strongly, he argued that recognition-based theories of freedom, like most accounts of solidarity, oppose what Kant originally understood to be the essence of positive freedom, namely the setting of volitional ends in accordance …

Untitled, Atticus Mosser

Debate Essay Winners

3rd Place Winner - Middle School Division

Atticus Mosser

West End Middle School

In Opposition Of The Electoral College, Sadia Bolduc

Debate Essay Winners

3rd Place Winner - High School Division

Saida Bolduc

Martin Luther King, Jr. Magnet High School

Life In Hampton Roads Survey Press Release #4: Presidential Polling, Social Science Research Center, Old Dominion University

Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report

Life in Hampton Roads Survey - Presidential Polling Results

Respondents were asked: “Do you approve or disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as president?” Roughly one-third (34.1%) approved, with 13.9% strongly approving. Nearly two-thirds (65.9%) disapproved, with 43.8% disapproving strongly.

Baudrillard And The Viral Violence Of Cyber Security, Alex Rivera

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This paper explores Jean Baudrillard’s theorization on war and communication, connecting it to recent developments in the field of cyber security. With the important elevation of military forces such as the United States Cyber Command, critical theory needs to interrogate the increasing stature and seriousness of the cyber domain in global military strategies. Baudrillard’s critique shifts the focus from simple military strategies to the globe’s consumption of the information that is offered by the global information complex. This paper explains the nuances of violence surrounding the exchange of media surrounding war, criticizing both pro-war and anti-war stances, to examine the …

Samuel Huntington's Clash Of Civilizations And Its Allure For The Past Thirty Years, Michaela Munda

Departmental Honors Projects

Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington wrote, taught, and advised on United States defense and foreign policy for over fifty years. The 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, is by far the most prominent of Huntington’s works. Though the work pertained to the world order following the collapse of the Soviet Union, his urging to understand factors that would set up the next stages of world conflict seem to hold truth throughout the last thirty years, and even in the present. Huntington argues that culture and identity will be at the forefront of global conflict. …

How News Media Coverage Of Crises Promotes Conspiracy Beliefs, Richard L Kornrumpf

Undergraduate Arts and Research Showcase

While scholars of conspiracy theories have recently made great strides in understanding the basic nature and correlates of conspiratorial thinking, we still know little about how conspiracy beliefs are disseminated and communicated, especially when it comes to traditional media. Here we use a unique experiment to investigate whether media coverage of mass shootings – complete with the uncertainty, conflicting reports, and dubious official narratives that characterize such coverage – provides the raw material for conspiracy theories and promotes conspiracy beliefs among viewers. We find that implicit conspiratorial information – that which causes confusion and foments uncertainty – does not enflame …

A State Divided: The Reality Of Education In Maine, Gabrielle Raymond

Honors Program Theses

In Maine there is a lack of a comprehensive policy that allows and facilitates an equal education for all students no matter where they go to school. In order to research what is driving this inequality a specific policy was selected to use as the case study. The policy selected was proficiency-based learning. This policy was enacted in 2012 which makes it the most recent comprehensive education policy passed in Maine. In addition, this policy mandated similar concepts as past policy, so it was able to illustrate the trends in Maine’s education policy. In order to understand what effects education …