Political Science Commons^™

A Comparative Analysis Of Free Trade Between The U.S. And The Eu : A Case Study Of The U.S./Chile Fta And The Eu/Chile Fta, Misti Dawn Sharp

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Unlike many studies that assess the impacts of free trade agreements (FTAs), this thesis is a study of the negotiated outcomes in FTAs between the United States (U.S.) and Chile, and the European Union (EU) and Chile. Existing negotiation literature pertains to multilateral trade talks, dispute settlements or bilateral one good trade agreements. Studies regarding the negotiation process and other factors influencing outcomes in comprehensive FTAs are rare. In order to address this gap in the literature, this thesis is an analysis of how and why the FTA between Chile and the U.S. differs from the FTA between Chile and …

Of/By/For: The Rhode Island Student Political Boot Camp, Scott Andrews

Senior Honors Projects

Of/By/For/RI: The Rhode Island Student Political Boot Camp

Scott Andrews

Sponsor: Maureen Moakley, Political Science

“Election? What Election?” The 2011 Princeton Review rankings selected the University of Rhode Island in this category as one of the 20 most apathetic colleges in the country. When I asked students on URI’s campus why they did not engage in activism, the most common answer was they felt they lacked the knowledge and skills to be effective. I wanted to create a community of youth activists at URI and other colleges and high schools throughout Rhode Island who feel empowered to take action on …

United States Sophistry On The Palestinian Resolution For Statehood, Marc James Mason

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This project examines the rhetorical devices and practices used by the Obama Administration to express and construct opposition to the Palestinian Authority’s statehood bid. This study focuses on uncovering the ideology embedded within President Obama’s Speech to the United Nations General Assembly during the opening of the 66th Session. By conducting an ideology rhetorical analysis of this text, this examination will uncover the reasoning that Obama deploys to make sense of and define the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and more specifically, the Palestinian bid for statehood. This ideology has contributed to the perpetuation of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories; thereby, …

Woodrow Wilson: Examining The Scholarly Statesman Through A Rhetorical Lens, Candice Elaine Mae Radloff

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

My Capstone Project is a rhetorical and descriptive analysis of President Woodrow Wilson’s most notable speeches from 1896 to 1917. As a scholar-president, I particularly focus on Wilson’s ability to translate his personal scholarship into effective rhetoric at different points in his career. I provide the historical background and context necessary to understand the relevance and impact of the selected speeches. The six speeches that I analyze reflect his scholarship and rhetorical genius in the political arena, covering the three pivotal phases of his profession life: university scholar and president, governor, and President of the United States. I also consider …

The "Troubles:" Northern Irish Political Contention From Sunningdale To The Good Friday Agreement, Daniel J. Foley

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This paper looks to answer the question: Can the contentious politics thesis of Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly explain why the Good Friday Agreement (1998) (GFA) successfully produced a lasting peace in Northern Ireland, when the Sunningdale (1973) and the Anglo-Irish (1985) agreements failed to do so? I set out to study the buildup and aftermath of each agreement and subsequently examine each through the lens of the contentious politics thesis, searching for causal mechanisms and processes that explain the success of the GFA. The purpose of the contentious politics thesis is not to examine various forms of …

The Egyptian Revolution Goes Viral: Reading Categories Of Tweets In The Twitter-Created Networked Public Sphere, Alexander Craig Benson Fay

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The expansion of online social media (OSM) and networked information technology (NIT) use has coincided with reinvigorated democratic movements around the world, including the toppling of authoritarian governments in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011. This paper examines the variety of uses for Twitter during the Egyptian revolution, as Hosni Mubarak’s regime collapsed in less than three weeks after 30 years in power.

To achieve this analysis, this paper first divided the revolution into Fisk’s four stages of political crisis. Next, the authors extracted 37,634 tweets containing key words from an archive of 16 million tweets collected from January 23-February 8, …

Collaborating To Build Futures The Role Of Non-Governmental Organizations In Creating Education Opportunities For Migrant Workers’ Children In China, Emerson A. Gale

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This project examines how informal and legal relationships between the Chinese government, migrant communities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are useful for educating migrant workers’ children. Market reforms have increased internal migration of Chinese families and have sparked a growth in non-profit NGOs which assist under-privileged migrant youth. Contemporary Chinese urban education literature notes legal and financial obstacles which prevent millions of migrant students from being entitled to the same education opportunities as their non-migrant peers. I note that creating equitable schooling for migrant youth is highly important for the political, economic, and social health of the Chinese state. By drawing …

Foundations Of Euroskepticism In The United Kingdom: Declining Support For The European Union, Kayla Walsh

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

I discuss two questions pertaining to the relationship of the United Kingdom and Europe: why has support always been lower in the United Kingdom for Europe than other member states and why is support for Europe in decline?

To show the low support as well as the decline in support, I look at two referendums in the UK on membership, one in 1975 and another in 2011 that show two end points for how low support has fallen. I then discuss the history of the United Kingdom and her relationship with the European institutions to lay the foundation of the …

Interpreting Judicial Behavior: How Content Analysis Of Language Reveals The Values, Philosophy, And Judicial Decision Making Style Of William H. Rehnquist, Megan Ryan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The intention of this analysis was to comment on the democratic nature of the United States Supreme Court by analyzing the decision making style of Supreme Court justice, William H. Rehnquist. There were two main research questions that drove this inquiry. First, was Rehnquist a consistent jurist? And second, which decision making model best exemplified his decision making style? In order to answer these questions, a computer assisted content analysis was conducted on the language Rehnquist used to describe his judicial philosophy and the justifications he made in opinions he wrote pertaining to personal privacy issues that came before the …

Competing For Relevance: Iran's Internal Struggle To Define The Arab Spring, Laila Taraghi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the wake of the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, political figures in Iran have offered competing claims of inspiration for the protests now spreading through the broader MENA region. This paper aims to compare the discourse of regime leaders to that of opposition activists, each seeking to frame current events in the region as a reflection of their particular aspirations and competing worldviews. Benford and Snow's literature on challenges facing movement adherents embroiled in contested framing processes will be employed as a means of highlighting some of the various obstacles to political transformation in the case of Iran. …

Leadership And Innovative Environment In Organizations, Xiaojuan Xia

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

This article examines the relationship between leader-follower friendships and the innovative environment in organizations. The results of the study reveal that leader-follower friendships are positively related to the measurements of innovative environment. Organizations with an innovative environment exhibit strong overall leader-follower friendships. Measures of leader-follower friendships are obtained from Boyd and Taylor's developmental approach to the examination of friendships between leaders and followers. In order to find out the determinations of an innovative environment, this paper reviews the work of Van der Sluis, Baldridge, Burnham, Bharadwaj, Menon, McLean, and others. The article synthesizes the literature, and lists the factors that …

Relationship Between Cultural Intelligence And Leadership, Lu Yang

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

The study investigates the prediction that the higher cultural intelligence competencies, the more effective leadership. Multiple regression analysis of data from 14 managers in the United States and 71 managers in China report several relationships between the cultural intelligence competencies and effective leadership. The study focused on the relationships of each dimension of the Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS), Metacognitive (ME), Cognitive (C), Motivational (MO) and Behavioral (B), to each dimension of the Leadership Behavior Inventory: Visualizing Greatness (VG), Empowering the ―We‖ (WE), Communicating for Meaning (CM), Managing Oneself (MOS), and Care and Recognition (CR). Analysis indicated that there are significant …

Patronage Politics And Public Goods Provision In Africa, Alex M. Kroeger

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

Many prevailing views contend that African politics are strongly influenced by vertical networks of dyadic patronage relationships that have a damaging effect on political systems, economies, and civil society. Since independence, the increasing size of many African cabinets would, following the literature, indicate a growth in political patronage networks. While these networks may increase the likelihood of leadership survival, it is expected, ceteris paribus, that growing patronage coalitions would diminish government revenue allocated toward the provision of public goods. This study goes beyond previous research by quantitatively examining the relationship between cabinet size and public goods provision that has …

Examining The Covariance Of Political And Religious Beliefs Within Individuals And Across Generations, Amanda Balzer

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

The political and religious are demonstrably intertwined in American politics and within the preferences of individual citizens. This dissertation has attempted to examine possible theoretical reasons for the overlap and sources of development of these belief systems within individuals and across generations. In sum, different Moral Foundations are associated with different preferences for organizing society and approaching religion; grandparents, parents and children share many political and religious beliefs, though not all Moral Foundations; and genetics influence part of the variance on religious and political preferences and part of their overlap is due to a shared genetic path. Most scholarship exploring …

Abortion And Distress: The Role Of State-Level Restrictive Policies Regarding Reproduction, Elizabeth Straley

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Does state legal context modify the association between abortion and distress among women in the United States? Adjusting for individual characteristics that could be associated with distress based on stress and stigma frameworks, I examine if state legal context modifies the association between abortion and distress using a nationally representative sample of American women ages 25-45. The use of state-level factors as a proxy for social context in this research has not been part of previous studies of the consequences of abortion. In order to appropriately examine the cross-level modifying effects of state level legal context on abortion status with …

A Cup Of Tea A Study Of The Tea Party Caucus In The United States House Of Representatives, Stephen Phillips

HIM 1990-2015

Over the course of the last few years, a new movement has taken the American political system by storm, the Tea Party. The movement has not only captivated our media but also the minds of ordinary Americans and political elites. According to popular consensus and academic opinion, the Tea Party is comprised of a group of conservative-leaning Republicans who want a smaller government and a lesser tax burden. This is what we think of the Tea Party, but is it true? It is perceived that Tea Party members differ significantly from their Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives, but …

Finding The Dominant Characteristics That Contribute To Effectively Implementing Best Practices In Primary Inclusion Classrooms Using The Inclusive Classroom Profile (Icp), Marilyn Romero

HIM 1990-2015

In 1997, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was amended to emphasize the need for students with disabilities to have access to the general curriculum. Along with IDEA, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), emphasized that all children must have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education (Sec. 1001, Part A, Title 1 of ESEA; 20U.S.C. 6301) increasing the need for effective inclusion classrooms in schools around the country. This study evaluated six inclusive classrooms (three partial and three full) from a large metropolitan school district in Florida. The classrooms' best practices were assessed using the …

Cognitive Theory A Qualitative Comparison Of The George W. Bush Administration And The Barack H.Obama Administration, Shelley Urbanovich

HIM 1990-2015

Although Republicans and Democrats frequently disagree ideologically, the leaders of both parties share one commonality in particular--they inevitably make flawed judgments. To adequately understand the extent to which psychological filters act as a fundamental factor in decision making, this thesis shall analyze current political events and observe how partisans within both administrations deal with information incompatible with their own values and beliefs. Specifically referencing the war in Iraq, weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), civil unrest, national security, the national economic climate, and the housing market, this study examines the way leaders deal differently with conflicting information. Although all subjects in …

Economic Institutional Change In Bolivia And Peru A Discursive Institutionalist Approach, Ryan Whittingham

HIM 1990-2015

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, a number of Latin American countries have undergone a marked shift to the left in their politics. With this, a number of Latin American countries have been pursuing economic policies that give a greater role for the state in economic affairs. Hugo Chavez has promised to build "twenty-first century socialism" in Venezuela, while Bolivia's Evo Morales often attacks the "neoliberalism" that previously guided economic reform in that country. This thesis investigates these economic institutional changes through a discursive institutionalist perspective, focusing on two Latin American countries: Bolivia and Peru. The goal is to …

The Californians Against Sexual Exploitation (Case) Act: A Case Study In Policy Advocacy, Bailey Mannisto-Ichés

Capstone Collection

In any given year in the United States of America at least 100,000 domestic youth are sexually exploited through the commercial sex industry. Current national and state laws do not adequately protect these children from being groomed, pimped, and exploited over and over again in their young lives. A majority of these children are trafficked from, into or within the nation’s most populated state of California. In 2003 the FBI identified three of the country’s 13 high-­‐intensity child sex trafficking cities as being in California. The cycle of violence these children endure is not being brought to justice through the …

Don’T Fear The Reaper An Analysis Of The United States’ Drones, Logan Christopher O'Brien

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Wars and the strategies used to fight them have constantly evolved throughout the history of mankind, simultaneously revealing our innovative brilliance and our inherent inability to avoid conflict with one another. The current state of the United States’ “War on Terror,” composed of the Afghanistan conflict and outlying operations in countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere around the world, has spurred exemplary advances used to combat a new type of enemy. Thus enters the drone, a remotely piloted aircraft that can be used for reconnaissance purposes or offensive targeting operations.

The drone is unique in that the pilot …

Mother Knows Best: The Rhetorical Persona Of Michelle Obama And The "Let's Move" Campaign, Monika Bertaki

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Some first ladies are often condemned for being too involved with the presidents' power in politics while other first ladies find themselves condemned for the lack of involvement. First ladies, it seems, are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Consequently, Michelle Obama faces rhetorical problems that in some respects are similar to those of previous first ladies and in other respects are quite different. Along with the criticisms encountered by previous presidential wives, Obama faces the stereotypes African American women have endured since the inception of the nation. Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign serves as a rhetorical …

Public Corruption For Gain In America: The Costly Consequences Of Violating Public Trust, Yvonne Atkinson Gates

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Several empirical analyses have explored corruption in government to determine the factors that contribute to corrupt behavior of elected officials.

This study will focus, explore, and enhance the research on the causes of public corruption among elected county commissioners by examining four domains of corruption causality: individual characteristics of elected officials, county government characteristics, county government fiscal performance, and community characteristics. This study will attempt to determine if General Strain Theory can provide a theoretical framework for understanding the causes of public corruption and, to what degree it can predict whether elected county officials will engage in corrupt behavior.

Understanding Policy Change Using A Critical Junctures Theory In Comparative Context: The Cases Of Ireland And Sweden, Paul Donnelly, John Hogan

Articles

Utilizing a new theory for examining critical junctures, we seek to better understand the nature of industrial policy change in Ireland during the 1950s and macroeconomic policy change in Sweden in the 1980s. Did these policy changes constitute critical junctures, or something less, and if so why? The theory consists of three elements – economic crisis, ideational change, and the nature of the policy change – that must be identified for us to be able to declare with some certainty if a policy change constitutes a critical juncture. Herein, we will be examining the roles of a variety of change …

China In Africa Examining Chinese Foreign Aid In Africa And Implications For Us Interests, Zachary Desjardins

Political Science

China’s engagement with Africa has drawn the attention of policy makers worldwide. While Chinese interests in the region appear relatively passive at present, there is the potential for either a detrimental or largely positive impact on US interests. I assert that the US should engage with Chinese to support both their interests while providing a quantum leap for African development.

Homosexuality In Africa: The Causes Of State Discrimination Based On Orientation, Sean Whipple

Political Science

No abstract provided.

Defining A Movement: Ann Marie Buerkle, The 112th Congress, And The Meaning Of The Tea Party, Matthew W. O'Neil

Political Science

No abstract provided.

Changing The World From Classrooms To Communities: Designing And Disseminating A Service-Learning Curriculum For Teaching In A Formal Education Setting, Amanda English

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

To change the world is a growing desire among many of today’s student populations, portrayed increasingly across the spectrum of media, social trends and career pursuits. While the demand grows among students for community-oriented and socially-responsible opportunities, the offerings in educational institutions must respond to these emerging requests with new and innovative academic programs. This text emphasizes the role of the developing discipline of service-learning in channeling these energies and providing students with deep and meaningful academic experiences. Its content seeks to combat misconceptions of service-learning as simply an extra-curricular activity and provide tangible methods for incorporating its concepts into …

A High Stakes Gamble In North Las Vegas, Robert E. Lang

Lincy Institute Reports and Briefs

The City of North Las Vegas, operating in the shadow of the Las Vegas Strip, one of the world’s most iconic urban settings, faces a series of financial and political challenges that threaten its ability to perform basic municipal services. This paper explores how North Las Vegas reached the edge of insolvency, the implications for North Las Vegas and the surrounding municipalities of Las Vegas, Henderson, and unincorporated Clark County, and the path forward in the face of unprecedented economic and political turmoil.

Social Media And Its Potential Effects On Civic Engagement, Kathleen Elizabeth Walpole

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Social media has been predicted as a tool to change the democratic process and turn around the substantial decline in political participation that has occurred among American citizens in the most recent years. Yet, since it is still relatively young and unharnessed, many argue that any effect that social media can have on civic engagement cannot be determined yet. This thesis explores and discusses how the emergence of social media as a campaign tool could effect traditional forms of civic engagement as well as produce new forms.

In the 2008 election, social media was capitalized by the presidential campaign of …