Political Science Commons^™

Toward Understanding The Nature Of Leadership In Alleviating State Fragility, Ajay Tejasvi Narasimhan

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Approximately sixty countries have been designated `Fragile States' by international development agencies. Home to two billion of the world's poorest people, these fragile states are characterized by violence, weak institutions and shattered economies. Not only do they pose a challenge to regional security, they often become the breeding grounds for terrorism.

Donor agencies pour billions of dollars annually into these countries - through policy advice and conditional loans - to alleviate fragility and promote development. Development, however it is defined, involves economic, social and political transformation. Such a transformation is shaped by ideas, engages multiple interests, and proceeds within rules …

Africa's Unresponsive Democratization: The Relationship Between Regime Type And The Quality Of Life In Africa, Caryn Anne Peiffer

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Scholars and policy makers alike argue that leaders of democracies should find it in their interest to provide high levels of social services due to a fear of being voted out of office. Yet, I find that Africa's newer democracies provide levels of social services strikingly similar to what the continent's existing non-democracies supply. This dissertation seeks to explain why this is the case.

I start by exploring the determinants of Africa's most recent wave of democratization, and find that much of Africa's 1990s democratic wave can be attributed to changes in foreign circumstances rather than from pressures from domestic …

Idealism And Actualization. Saint-Just In Theory, Practice, And Exigency, Craig R. Schamel

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Louis-Antoine Léon de Saint-Just (1767-1794) was a revolutionary, a statesman, and a political philosopher, yet it is largely only as a revolutionary that he is remembered. As a political person who occupied these three different but overlapping roles, Saint-Just is ideal as the subject and center of a study of actualization, the taking of political ideals into reality. Saint-Just’s political philosophy was that of an idealist, and yet he, by force of circumstance, ability, and audacity, had the opportunity in his short life to attempt to establish and put into practice his political ideals. In his work as a political …

Book Review By John Gale: Invited Review Of "Free Burma: Transnational Legal Action For Corporate Social Accountability" In The Book Of Perspectives On Politics, Tun Myint, John G. Gale

Political Science Faculty Work

No abstract provided.

Fear Factor: The Role Of Fear In A Liberal Democracy, Sasha Stillman

Featured Research

What is the most appropriate role of fear in contemporary democratic politics? Political figures and institutions harness and even create public fear for power and for maintaining order and structure. This thesis explores the moral dimensions of the use of fear in politics. I expected to find that not all politically premeditated uses of fear are undesirable. Could it be morally acceptable then, or even praiseworthy to use politically-motivated fear in certain cases? In certain situations, public fear may, in fact, be used to enhance democracy. This essay clarifies situations in which the political use of fear is both desirable …

Vol. 6 No. 1, Moynihan European Research Centers, Winter 2012, Moynihan European Research Centers

Newsletters from Moynihan European Research Centers

German Consul General discusses the Euro crisis -- Panel at the CNYCSS conference -- Global Europe -- Graduate student EU simulation -- Atlantis transatlantic degree program -- Certificate of Advanced Study

Book Review: China And Orientalism, Fabio Lanza

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This slim, sharply-argued volume should be a mandatory reading for all of us who work on post-1949 China. China and Orientalism is a refreshing and often eye-opening analysis on how knowledge of the object called “China” has been constructed in the West since the end of Maoism. That knowledge, as Vukovich cogently demonstrates, is fundamentally flawed.

Writing as a “barbarian” outside the disciplinary gates— i.e. a self-declared non-sinologist (pp. xii-xiii) —Vukovich argues that, since the late 1970s, Western knowledge production about the PRC has been dominated and defined by a new form of Orientalism. But while for Edward Said the …

Celebrating Chunjie In Old Nanjing, Sarah Tynen

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“You must be so homesick! Aren’t you going home to celebrate chunjie?” asked the Auntie who sells tofu on the back of a freight tricycle in the old city of Nanjing. Auntie rides down the narrow, winding alleys of Old Nanjing several times a day to emphatically announce her price of tofu at 500 grams for 1.5 yuan (that’s about a pound for 25 cents). Standing at my doorstep the week before chunjie, or the Spring Festival, also known as the Chinese New Year in the West, she told me to stock up. It was the last day of …

Rural Return: Xi Jinping’S Iowa Visit, Kate Merkel-Hess

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit to the US took him across the country, from Washington, DC, to Los Angeles (where, sadly, despite spending some time with a sartorially-challenged David Beckham, he did not show off his soccer skills, as he did in the subsequent Irish leg of his trip).

But it wasn’t the visits to the coasts that dominated human interest stories on Xi Jinping’s trip, but the days in the middle, when he spent a little time in Iowa. Xi first visited Iowa in 1985, when he was an official in Hebei province, and this trip was a …

Book Review: Keeping The Nation’S House, Elizabeth Lacouture

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In 1940, China’s Nationalist Ministry of Education issued a decree from its wartime capital of Chongqing. At a time when Japan occupied China’s eastern seaboard and the Communists controlled the north, the Ministry called on educators and homemakers to “cultivate children’s happiness.” Doing more with less, teachers and mothers were supposed to make children believe that “even if the food is unsatisfactory, the clothes are inadequate, or the habitation is insufficient… it is still very good” (p. 1). In Keeping the Nation’s House, Helen Schneider explores how Chinese educators and the Chinese state transformed the seemingly frivolous and individualistic bourgeois …

Excerpt: Autumn In The Heavenly Kingdom, Stephen R. Platt

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A big new China book to hit shelves in recent weeks is Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War, written by University of Massachusetts, Amherst historian Stephen Platt. Platt places the Taiping Rebellion in a global context, emphasizing its importance to American and European observers of the conflict, whose economic ties to China made them keenly interested in the country’s domestic situation. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom also offers new insights into how the Taiping Rebellion tied into Chinese internal politics, particularly the ways in which the Taiping rebels sought …

Book Review: Modern China’S Network Revolution, Brett Sheehan

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The title of Zhongping Chen’s new book has a double meaning. Modern China’s Network Revolution refers both to his claim for new, revolutionary forms of networking among lower-Yangzi Chinese elites at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries and to the revolutionary roles of those networks in elite mobilization, especially in the 1911 revolution which overthrew the Qing. As such, the book makes a meaningful contribution to debates on the nature of Chinese organizational practices, especially merchant organizational practices, and to debates about the nature of late-Qing elite mobilization and the relationship of those mobilized elites …

The First Asian Man: The Story Behind The Jeremy Lin Story, Yong Chen

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There are good reasons why Jeremy Lin deserves the extensive news coverage he has received recently: a Harvard grad playing in the NBA, he had an indispensible role in the Knicks’ 9-2 run before losing to Miami on February 23, averaging 23.9 points and 9.2 assists in 11 games. Yet the extraordinary “Linsanity” displayed by the mass media seems to suggest that what makes Lin’s story so notable is what it says about perceptions of Asian masculinity. In Lin, the media has finally found an Asian man.

Letter From Little Lhasa, Reshma Patil

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The runaway from a Tibetan village in Naba, China, led the way down the slippery dirt track to the doorstep of a restaurant with a Potala Palace bereft of tourists and soldiers painted on its blue walls. The Tibetan-speaking attendant at Chonor House politely declined to serve my first meal in McLeod Ganj. The kitchens were functioning only for hotel guests until the end of Losar. The three-day Tibetan New Year passed uncelebrated earlier this month in the Indian hill-town teeming with Tibetan exiles who give Dharamshala the moniker of Little Lhasa. The exiled Tibetan government is edged higher in …

Introduction, Barbara Lewis

Trotter Review

What is the political valence of blackness at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century; has it waxed or waned? Is it headed to greater potency or back into the dark days of the past when complexion determined the worth of character? Major political advances have been achieved nationally in the last ten years, most significantly in the election of the nation’s first African American president. Yet a resistant status quo remains. The push to unseat President Obama is virulent, and it is hard to imagine that all of the motivation to do so is tied only …

Governor Deval Patrick And The Representation Of Massachusetts’ Black Interests, Ravi K. Perry

Trotter Review

This article examines the rhetorical strategies and legislative initiatives of Deval Patrick and his efforts to represent black interests in Massachusetts. Utilizing speech content analysis, census data, interview data, and archives of executive and legislative actions, the article identifies that Massachusetts’ only black governor has been able to advance policies and programs designed to represent black interests. The results indicate that when black interest policy actions are framed utilizing a targeted universalistic rhetorical strategy, Patrick advanced black interests as he detailed how his proposed initiatives benefited all citizens. At the state level, the finding exposes the limits of the deracialization …

Considered A Foreign Policy Neophyte, Barack Obama Emerges As One Of The Nation’S Most Competent Commanders In Chief, Howard Manly

Trotter Review

During the 2008 presidential campaign, the main criticism against Barack Obama was that he was too green to lead America’s foreign policy and military.

It was a charge that Republican conservatives made against Democratic candidates with predictable frequency and had become a proven winning strategy after Ronald Reagan steamrolled perceived military bumbler Jimmy Carter in 1980. Conventional wisdom suggested that strategy would work even better against Obama.

In a move that foreshadowed his military decision-making, Obama authorized within the first four months of his administration the military rescue of Richard Phillips, the American sea captain taken hostage by pirates in …

Commentary: Creating A Pipeline For A More Inclusive Democracy, Joyce Ferriabough

Trotter Review

After the 2010 elections, the number of women holding elective office in Massachusetts plummeted to 1998 levels, with women comprising only 24 percent of all officeholders and 20 percent of local elected officials.

The figures for women of color who were officeholders were even starker: They held only 2 percent of elected offices, despite people of color comprising more than 20 percent of the state’s population. Women of color who are current officeholders in Massachusetts are typically the “first and only.” In the state senate, there is one woman of color, Sonia Chang-Diaz. She is the first Latina woman to …

Denver And Boston: Why One City Elects Black Mayors And The Other Has Not, Kenneth J. Cooper

Trotter Review

Denver’s population is only 10 percent black, and has never been above 12 percent in any Census, yet in July 2011 the city elected a black mayor. Michael Hancock, a former city councilman, is actually the second African-American mayor of Denver. Wellington Webb served the limit of three terms through 2003. Three of the city’s last four mayors have been of color. Federico Peña, a Mexican American, became the first in 1983.

At 24 percent, Boston’s black population is twice as large as Denver’s and has been so throughout the three decades during which Denver has sent two African Americans …

The Dollar Hegemony And The U.S.-China Monetary Disputes, Xiongwei Cao

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the current disputes between the United States and China over the exchange rate of the Chinese currency renminbi using an International Political Economy (IPE) analysis. Monetary relations are not mere economic affairs, but bear geopolitical implications. Money is power. Money is politics. The pursuit of monetary power is an important part of great power politics. Based on this assertion, the thesis studies past cases of monetary power struggles between the United States and the Great Britain, the Soviet Union, Japan, and the European Union (EU), respectively. The thesis then investigates the dollar’s status as the dominant international …

Korean-American Divided Families: Catalyst For Changing The Course Of The Usa Policy On North Korea, Jungyoung Park

Capstone Collection

The Korea War has left deep scars on the psyches of Koreans in Korea and throughout the world. Among many ordeals that Korean citizens had to suffer during and after the war, the separation of the family was one of the most tragic continuing results of the war. Countless individuals were forcibly severed from their family members in North Korea and most haven’t seen their separated relatives for over six decades. There have been 18 rounds of reunions between North and South Koreans since a historic summit talk in June 2000. However, Korean-American members of divided families cannot participate in …

Addressing The Learning Needs At Occupy Dc, Andrew J. Batcher

Capstone Collection

The purpose of this paper is to examine how learning can help the Occupy movement in Washington DC. It explores three questions. What are the learning needs of the movement? What educational content can help meet those needs? And how can education be practiced in a way that most effectively addresses the learning needs within the real world circumstances of the movement? Research methods include participant observation, surveys, interviews, focus groups, literature review, and primary document review. Data was coded into 11 outcome oriented learning needs and 3 educational orientations which are geared towards meeting those needs. This paper is …

Mark D. Anderson. Disaster Writing: The Cultural Politics Of Catastrophe In Latin America. Charlottesville And London: U Of Virginia P, 2011. Print. 241 Pages, Martín Camps

College of the Pacific Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Turning Away From Your Slavic Brother: The Effects Of Identity On Relations Between Russia And Belarus, Matt Matejka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

On September 24, 2011, it was announced that Putin would run for president once again in 2012. The reaction in the West was that ―the more things change, the more they stay the same.‖ The Western conception of the post-Cold War Russia is often one of remarkable consistency since the turn of the century. This Western narrative focuses on an autocratic Putin reigning over his resurgent and confrontational Russia. Does this narrative tell the story of Russia today, or does it instead obscure it? To answer this I have elected to analyze Russian identity and how it relates to Russia‘s …

Privatization And Performance In The Implementation Of Temporary Assistance To Needy Families, Adam Michael Butz

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

In response to the passage of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) and its lead cash assistance program Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), states have taken unique and divergent approaches to welfare policy implementation. One popular approach to workfare delivery, known as privatization, involves contracting with non-profit and for-profit entities operating within the private sector. The General Accounting Office reports that nearly every state is privatizing TANF services to some degree through third-party contracts, but very little is understood about why variation in contracting exists and the ramifications for the program outcomes of welfare recipients. This dissertation …

Creed Vs. Deed: Secession, Legitimacy, And The Use Of Child Soldiers, Trace C. Lasley

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

The use of child soldiers has troubled human rights activists, policy-makers, and local communities for decades. Although rebellions around the world routinely use children in their activities, many do not. Despite its overwhelming importance for conflict resolution, the topic of child soldiers remains understudied. My research blends classic rational choice and constructivist themes to develop an explanation for when child soldiers will be used, and when they will be avoided.

The likelihood of child recruitment is influenced by the value of international opinion; this is determined by the groups' long-term goals. Secessionist rebellions desire to have their own state. However, …

Coups And Conflict: The Paradox Of Coup-Proofing, Jonathan M. Powell

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

This study develops a leader-centric theory of civil-military relations that expands upon three broad areas of research. Specifically, the study suggests that leaders will evaluate multiple threats to their political survival and will ultimately implement strategy that is most likely to keep them in power. While Downs (1957) has noted such a tendency in democracies, this study expands this rationale to authoritarian regimes by focusing on the primary means of authoritarian removal: the military coup. In contrast to the state-centric nature of traditional international relations theory, this dissertation finds that leaders frequently undermine the power of the state in order …

Environmentalism/Postmodernism, Toby Ogunniya

A with Honors Projects

This presentation explores the meaning of environmentalism and postmodernism in a political science context.

The Fourth Amendment, Ethan Payne

A with Honors Projects

This projects explains the fourth amendment using skits and a PowerPoint presentation.

Measuring Human Rights: A Review Essay, David L. Richards

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Measuring Human Rights. By Todd Landman & Edzia Carvalho. New York, NY: Routledge, 2010. 163pp.