Political Science Commons^™

“It’S The Procedure, Stupid!”: Amendment Procedures And Their Effects On Constitutional Stability, Joseph Noss

CMC Senior Theses

Constitutions must change. No human can stop time from marching forward, nor the social, economic, cultural, and technological developments associated. As a result, constitutions necessitate mechanisms that allow for their own progress. The amendment procedure of a constitution—the rules that govern what changes can occur—is therefore fundamental to any constitutional system. Importantly, scholars, politicians, and citizens alike fail to take into account the significance of these amendment processes and their effects on the constitutions they govern. While usually treated as a constitutional after-thought, amendment procedures have one of the most pronounced, substantive effects on the permanence of a constitutional order. …

Desperate For Democracy: A Comparison Between Hong Kong’S 2014 Umbrella Movement And 2019 Antielab Protests, Annette Wong

CMC Senior Theses

Within the last five years, the special administrative region of Hong Kong found itself embroiled in two major anti-government protests that brought the entire city to a standstill. While both the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the 2019 AntiELAB Protests were similar in pro-democracy rhetoric and substantive collective action, the 2019 protests devolved into a much more violent and radical movement than that of 2014. This study investigates the factors that contributed to the differing protest cultures of the Umbrella Movement and the AntiELAB Protests. This study first explores the language of the Joint Declaration and Basic Law, and investigates British …

Obama, Trump, And Xi: Three South China Sea Strategies In The U.S.-China Battle For Global Hegemony, Adam Singer

CMC Senior Theses

The South China Sea is one of the world's largest regions of untapped resources and fisheries. Moreover, one-third of all global trade flows through its waters. Due to its rapid ascension to great power status, China has been able to aggressively expand into the region and both build new islands and lay claim to already existing ones. With no other countries capable of or willing to push back against Beijing, the United States stepped in.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the strategies undertaken by the Obama administration and the Trump administration in the face of China’s expansion …

Hong Kong Identity On The Rise: Understanding The Role Of Subnational Identity In The 2019-2020 Hong Kong Protests, Gemma Sykes

CMC Senior Theses

In 2019, Hong Kong erupted in mass protests demonstrating the city’s desire to be recognized as having a distinct peripheral identity with separate political expectations. What began as demonstrations against the proposed Extradition Bill quickly became a mass display of the differences between Hong Kong’s peripheral nationalism and the national Chinese identity. Since 2008, the subnational ‘Hongkonger’ identity has seen a dramatic rise in self-identification polls from only 18 percent in 2008 to 52.9 percent in 2019. Moreover, in 2019, 92.5 percent of 18 to 29 year olds in Hong Kong identified solely with the ‘Hongkonger’ identity. This thesis seeks …

Populism: An Exploration Into The American Case Through The Academic Literature, Data Analysis, And Fiction, Maxwell Knowles

CMC Senior Theses

The twenty-first century has seen a rise in populist leadership and rhetoric throughout the globe, with the United States standing as one powerful case. This thesis hopes to develop the “story” of populism from multiple perspectives, attempting to not only inform but change the way we approach the populist movement in America, and perhaps, the world. In Part I, I summarize and blend much of the core literature written on populism and economic change, developing the story that populism in America today has its roots in the significant techno-economic and cultural paradigmatic shifts of the 1970s. Social media and an …

Buying Influence? An Analysis Of The Political And Economic Impacts Of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment In The European Union, Ethan Kable

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis analyzes the economic and political impacts of the recent influx of Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) into the European Union (EU). I consider the ways in which EU perceptions of Chinese OFDI have evolved over the course of the past decade as well as what attempts the EU has made at an institutional level to address challenges posed by Chinese investment. I contend that despite institutional efforts to respond to these perceived challenges – namely losing a technological edge, security concerns, and unreciprocated market access – Chinese OFDI in the EU has had a divisive effect. Not …

Were The French Government’S Brexit-Related Worries Prior To The 2016 Referendum Overstated?, Claudia Michelle Chandra

CMC Senior Theses

The prospect of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union during the 2016 Brexit referendum was deeply troubling to French officials. As a historic leader of the European integration project, the French government and media worried that Brexit would embolden Eurosceptics in France. This threatened to undermine France’s identity as a pro-European nation. Also, due to France’s position as one of the UK’s main trading partners, French citizens and businesses feared that the end of freedom of movement between these countries would create burdensome legal and economic consequences. Nevertheless, more than three years have passed since the Brexit referendum and …

Legal Frameworks For Protecting Cultural Heritage In Conflict Zones, Marcie M. Muscat

Dissertations and Theses

Cultural heritage has always been at risk during times of war. UNESCO first endeavored to address the issue shortly after World War II, in 1954, when it passed the first of three signature conventions to protect against the damage, destruction, and pillage of cultural property in times of armed conflict. Lacunae and other deficiencies in their frameworks, however, rendered these conventions difficult to enforce and largely ineffectual. This study offers an assessment of the strengths and limitations of the UNESCO system of cultural-heritage protection, with a particular focus on the 1954 Hague Convention. It is argued that, by superseding certain …

Integration Of Social Work Practices With Refugees: An Action Research Study, Avril Williams Knox

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The United States is facing an increasing number of refugees and asylees who resettled and were forced to migrate from their countries of origin. In the United States, social service professionals and social workers of resettlement agencies are responsible for the program enrollment and follow-up with newly arrived refugees. Hence, there is a huge learning curve for these individuals. Although a substantial number of refugees are linked to appropriate resources, many are neglected and are unable to sustain themselves. This action research was based upon family systems theory. Integrative techniques used by social workers were explored. The information was subjective, …

Strategies For Cultural Integration Following Cross-Border Mergers And Acquisitions, Kimihiro Iwao

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Ineffective cross-border merger and acquisition (M&A) strategies can negatively impact value creation. Global information and communications technology (ICT) company leaders who do not effectively manage M&As risk eventual divestiture of their acquired targets. Guided by Haspeslagh and Jemison’s acquisition integration approach model and Hofstede’s 5 dimensions of national cultural theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies that leaders of global ICT companies use to integrate diverse workers following cross-border M&As. The participants were 8 IMs from low context cultures who supervised acquired foreign workers primarily from high context cultures. Data were collected through semistructured …

The Department Of Defense Transition Assistance Program: Servicemember Transition And Reintegration, Angelo Santella

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Department of Defense (DoD) Transition Assistance Program (TAP) was established by the U.S. federal government to support the transition and reintegration of service members into civilian communities upon discharge or retirement. The problem is that the actual success or failure of the TAP to facilitate that transition is not clearly understood. This quantitative study explored the relationships between former servicemembers who participated in TAP and participation success evaluating program outcomes. Mohr’s program theory served as the interpretive lens. Two research questions explored program aspects: (a) What is the individual likelihood that the Individual Development Plan (IDP) and Individual Transition …

Catholic And Evangelical Religious-Political Narratives About The Contraceptive Coverage Requirement Policy, Leah Marie Silverman

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The intersection of religion and politics results in “wicked” policy problems for which evidence-based solutions are hard to find. An example is the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive coverage requirement (CCR). Evidence suggests that women and society benefit from increased access to contraceptives, but religious freedom objections have been effective in litigation to limit the CCR's reach. The purpose of this study was to explore the narrative elements and strategies used by Catholic and Evangelical stakeholders regarding the CCR, contraceptives, and religious freedom. Social constructionism and the narrative policy framework (NPF) provided the foundation for the study. Data collection included legal …

From Hobbes To Habermas: The Anti-Cultural Turn In Western Political Thought, Ralph Gert Schoellhammer

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

The theme of this dissertation is the anti-cultural turn of Western Political Thought that has emerged out of Enlightenment thinking and was first turned into a comprehensive political idea by Thomas Hobbes.

Beginning with an overview of psychological research into the phenomenon of culture I put forward the argument that human beings are by nature social and individualistic, but that they oscillate between their ability to put group-interests before individual interests and vice versa. Culture is the main mechanism that influences which interest we give priority. This mechanism work through emotional attachments that create intuitions about what is morally right …

Judicial Elections, Public Opinion, And Their Impact On State Criminal Justice Policy, Travis N. Taylor

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

This dissertation explores whether and how the re-election prospects faced by trial court judges in many American states influence criminal justice policy, specifically, state levels of incarceration, as well as the disparity in rates of incarceration for Whites and Blacks. Do states where trial court judges must worry about facing reelection tend to encourage judicial behavior that results in higher incarceration rates? And are levels of incarceration and racial disparities in the states influenced by the proportion of the state publics who want more punitive policies? These are clearly important questions because they speak directly to several normative and empirical …

Should We Expect Each Year In The Next Decade (2019–28) To Be Ranked Among The Top 10 Warmest Years Globally?, Anthony Arguez, Shannan Hurley, Anand Inamdar, Laurel Mahoney, Ahira Sanchez-Lugo, Lilian Yang

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

Annual rankings of global temperature are widely cited by media and the general public, not only to place the most recent year in a historical perspective, but also as a first-order metric of recent climate change that is easily digestible by the general public. Moreover, all annual NOAAGlobalTemp anomalies from 1880 (the earliest reading available) through the mid-1970s are well below anomalies of the top 10 warmest years in Table 1, even when considering the uncertainty of the NOAAGlobalTemp time series values. While we expect the algorithm's performance to be largely independent of any changes made to the way that …

Microfinance In Latin America: Poverty Alleviation And The Impact Of Institutional Mimicry, Lindsay Jouben

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Microfinance has become a program of choice in the international development community. The World Bank has promoted microfinance programs under the idea that poverty alleviation can be accomplished by mainly providing credit. [1] As such, these policies are often replicated throughout the developing world. This replication is done through international organizations adopting a standard of best practices for the microfinance field. Best practices consist of a complex set of standard by which all banks must adhere if they receive funding from the World Bank or International Monetary Fund. These best practices, following neoliberal economics, lay out how microfinance should operate …

The Dark Tetrad, Social Dominance Orientation, And Online Political Discussion, Cory D. Taylor

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Previous literature into online trolling behavior has focused upon the role of the Dark Tetrad and political measures separately. This study extended the existing body of research by examining the relationship between the Dark Tetrad personality traits, social dominance orientation (SDO) and online political trolling in the United States of America. The data was collected using an online questionnaire from American users of Facebook and Reddit in the summer of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter movement, and in the runup to a hotly contested national election. Positive correlations were found between all of the Dark Tetrad traits, …

The State And War On Poverty: British Welfare Development And Its Legacies For Malawi, 1930s-1983, Gift Wasambo Kayira

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation documents the struggles and dilemmas that the Malawian state endured as it attempted to achieve its developmental goals from the 1930s to 1983. It contributes to histories of development by focusing on the interventions both the colonial and postcolonial states made to improve the living standards of African rural communities, the ideas which shaped state programs, and the behavior of the state which such interventions reveal. Scholars typically argue that state policy in Malawi was necessarily destructive and limited the economic progress of the local communities. The state deliberately pursued land, market, and other agricultural policies that constrained …

The Idea Of A Citizen: The Role Of Higher Education Institutions In The Development Of Citizens And An Exploration Of Innovative Teaching Techniques To Aid In The Process, Eric Matthew Myers

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This work seeks to explain how institutions of higher education and political science educators within those institutions can develop students into citizens. Understanding the role of each (institution, educator, and student) within American democracy is important and the focus of this research. As the roles of each are demarcated, it becomes clear that higher education institutions and their political science educators have a unique ability to nurture students into citizens with a strong sense of civic purpose and understanding.

The subsequent chapters in this work explore the use of experiential education and other innovative teaching methods to determine if students …

The Effects Of Punctuation Events On The Oil Policy Network: A Network Analysis Of Rulemaking Outputs, Fadi M. Mugheirbi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In this dissertation, I display the effect of punctuating events on the oil policy subsystem and network and, in turn, on the rulemaking process. Here I examine whether, and to what extent, the changes in the dynamics of the policy network and the composition of the subsystem caused by the punctuation could alter rulemaking outputs and whether these changes occur simultaneously or sequentially across the policy subsystem and network.

Building upon Punctuation-Equilibrium Theory (PET), Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), and the Policy Network Approach (PNA) alongside the political control literature, I provide explanations for the routines and outputs of rulemaking. Accordingly, …

The Rawlsian Mirror Of Justice, Jessica Flanigan

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Libertarians(like me) generally disagree with orthodox Rawlsians (like Samuel Freeman) about whether Rawlsian principles of distributive justice are compatible with libertarianism.¹In this essay, I set out to explain why. In section 1, I describe the problem, which is essentially that libertarians think the Rawlsian framework does not rule out anti-statist, capitalist, and broadly libertarian approaches to distributive justice and orthodox Rawlsians think that it does. I propose that this problem arises because the Rawlsian framework is underspecified in two ways. First, the Rawlsian framework has a lot of moving parts, so people with different pre-theoretical intuitions can use …

Increasing Latino Participation Rates In The 2020 Census In Chelsea, Ma, Fabián Torres-Ardila, Daniela Bravo, Franklin Ortiz

Gastón Institute Publications

Having an accurate count of the city of Chelsea’s Latino population will require strategic organizing by government officials and community leaders. If there is an undercount of the population, especially of immigrants who live in Chelsea, there will be long-term and potentially devastating effects on the city’s political power and less federal funding to address the needs of its Latino majority. We hope the results from this qualitative study will inform policies and recommendations to increase the participation of Chelsea residents in the upcoming 2020 Census. We hope the results will aid in developing culturally specific outreach strategies to inform …

Taming The Prince: Bringing Presidential Emergency Powers Under Law In Colombia, Andrea Scoseria Katz

Scholarship@WashULaw

Can courts check presidential power exercised in a crisis — and should they? The case of Colombia, which recently turned on its head a history of presidential overreach and judicial rubber-stamping, provides an answer in the affirmative. As in much of Latin America, throughout Colombia’s post-independence history, bloodshed fueled authoritarian tendencies, with presidents exploiting the need for “order” to centralize power. One critical weapon in the presidential toolkit was the power to declare a state of emergency. During the twentieth century, these decrees became a routine pretext for the President to govern unilaterally, acquiesced to by the legislature and rarely …

The Descendants Of Hurao: An Exploratory Study Of Chamoru Rights Groups, Alan T. Butler

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The psychological literature conducted in Guam on indigenous practices of resistance to colonialism is nonexistent. This dissertation responds to this absence in the literature by conducting an exploratory hermeneutic study on the lived experience of members of Chamoru rights groups in Guam. Data for this study were collected through semi-structured interviews with eight members of Chamoru rights groups. Results indicated that engagement in a Chamoru rights group can be a deeply meaningful experience that involves education, activism, and being part of a supportive community. This community was felt to be healing, allowing for active engagement with community issues and against …

Political Financing Reform: Politics, Policies, And Patronage In Malaysia, Sebastian Carl Dettman, Edmund Terence Gomez

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article analyses the evolution of political finance reform debates in Malaysia, one of the world’s most durable electoral authoritarian regimes. While the reliance of the dominant party, UMNO, on unfettered resources remained unchanged, crises in Malaysia’s political environment allowed civil society actors to concretise abstract debates over reform into specific proposals. Drawing from interviews, public statements and observation, two distinct periods in this reform debate are analysed: after Najib Razak assumed power in 2009, following the unprecedented electoral success of the opposition during the 2008 general election; and after the 1MDB scandal broke in 2015. In both periods, civil …

The Morning Meeting: Fostering A Participatory Democracy Begins With Youth In Public Education, Rebecca C. Tilhou

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

There is a faltering sense of democracy in America's current political climate due to polarized opinions about leadership's decisions and antagonistic political parties. John Dewey (1916) proposed that education is the place to foster democracy, as schools can provide a platform to actively engage students in authentic democratic experiences that will empower them to act democratically beyond the walls of the school. The democratic schools that emerged during the Free School Movement of the 1960s and 1970s embody Dewey's philosophy, specifically with the shared governance occurring in their School Meetings. Unfortunately, American public education's present preoccupation with standardization, proficiency scores, …

Role Of Art In International Relations : Analysis Of The Key Operational Patterns On The Example Of French Cultural Cluster, Maria Meshcherskaya

MA Theses

Reflecting on the role of art in the socio-cultural context would be unfair not to notice its unconventional nature of the transformation, definition, and understanding, depending on the time, place, and society, which would start the dispute. Yet, there is still no one answer or guide on how does art work as a singular system, using multiple mediums for translating, spreading, and sharing values from one culture to the another, without destroying origins of the message, but organically adopting it for the new environment. Luckily there is a set of tendencies kept by centuries, analysis of which might bring a …

The Dog That Barks: Understanding Propaganda Campaigns On Territorial Disputes, Frances Yaping Wang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Why do authoritarian states promote media coverage of foreign disputes in some contexts, but censor coverage in others? The use of media on matters of foreign policy is prevalent in both autocracies and democracies, yet their functions, especially in autocracies, are not well understood. This dissertation seeks to explain a statecraft autocratic leaders are especially adept at and are commonly engaged in – propaganda campaigns on territorial disputes. This project thus provides a window into the domestic constraints and motivations of authoritarian foreign policy and the resulting statecraft in managing its domestic publics on foreign policy issues. In explaining the …

Liberalism And The Problem Of Compassion In Rousseau, Smith, And Tocqueville, Lewis Hoss

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Liberal democracy has historically owed its attractiveness to the promise of a more compassionate society structured around pluralistic and tolerant principles. Yet recent events in western democracies seem to indicate a lack of compassionate social bonds. Why has a politics of compassion failed to materialize and what must be done to make good on the original promise of liberal democracy? To answer these questions, I provide a historically and theoretically grounded account of compassion as a principle of liberalism, with special attention to the political thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Alexis de Tocqueville. In particular, I seek to …

Relative Deprivation And Xenophobia: Patterns Of Anti-Vietnamese Radicalism Among Cambodia's Opposition Parties From 1993 - Present, Ratanak Khun

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Anti-Vietnamese sentiment has been the most highly displayed rhetoric by generations of Cambodian politicians. In contemporary Cambodia, the opposition parties have actively engaged in tirades aimed at the Vietnamese and the ruling CPP which came to power with Vietnamese military support in 1979. How are we to explain the hatred against the Vietnamese in Cambodia? From the examination of the activities of the BLDP, the royalist FUNCINPEC, and the CNRP, we conclude that relative deprivation of a role of power on the political stage emerges as a potential factor that explains why members of Cambodian opposition parties have taken a …