Political Science Commons^™

En(Gendering) Policy: Gender Policies In Former Soviet Republics, Natasha Lachelle Bingham

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines gender policies in former Soviet republics. Gender policies are depicted as traditional policies (including such policies as child support, spousal support, and inheritance rights), violence against women policies (domestic violence, marital rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment), and human trafficking policies. It builds upon previous works with a multi-methodological approach (content analysis, logistical regression, and qualitative survey analysis). The focus here is on the factors that influence adoption of formal policies in former Soviet republics from 1993-2008. I explore variance across both countries and policy areas, assessing whether (and why) certain post-Soviet states are more likely to …

Climate Change Displacement And Global Governance: A Case Study Of Three Intergovernmental Organizations And The Conflict Between The Member States And Bureaucracy, Andrea C. S. Berringer

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Climate change is a topic most often broached by environmental scientists and activists and its effects are discussed in terms of animal populations and atmospheric events. However, its direct effect on human life is yet to garner such attention. A changing climate will affect how people are able to use their environment, if at all. Sea level rise and desertification will force a shift in human habitation. How the world seeks to deal with this shift is yet to be seen. The global governance of climate change-induced displacement is currently at the stage of ad hoc development. Legal and conceptual …

Early Voting In The 2004 Presidential Election, James Michael Siira

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The addition of early voting laws has led to the many changes in the US political system. In this dissertation I examine early voting early voting in a number of different contexts. First, how early voting fits in with the larger issue of voter turnout in the U.S. Second, why some states have early voting policies and other states choose to not have those policies. Third, how state-level political parties view the option to cast an early vote. Fourth, the differences between early voters, election day voters, and non-voters. Fifth, what are the determents of casting an early ballot. Sixth, …

Two Cheers For Instant Runoff Voting, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

"Instant runoff voting" (IRV) is a system that allows voters to rank their choices in a multicandidate election. Thus, the second-choice voters of less successful candidates are redistributed to the front-runners. The purpose of this system is to prevent candidates opposed by a majority of voters from winning. For example, if candidates A and B each have 40 percent of the vote and candidate C has 20 percent, the front-runner supported by the majority of C's supporters is the true "majority choice" and will win under IRV. The purpose of this article is to critically examine the arguments for and …

Examining The Relationship Between Participatory Democracy And Nonwhite Domestic Workers In Porto Alegre, Brazil: Issues Of Race, Class And Privilege, Alexis Nicole Mootoo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Brazil is a nation that has professed to be a `racial democracy' such that race categories are not recognized. This implies that every citizen experiences equal access from a political, social and economic point of view, irrespective of skin color. Nevertheless, palpable racial inequalities exist in Brazil such that there is a primarily white elite class while Brazilians of African descent are typically poor. Male dominance is a worldwide phenomenon. When racial inequities are coupled with male dominance, Brazilian women of African origins suffer as they occupy the lowest socio-economic strata, which often remand them to work as domestics. Some …

The Indigenous Movement And The Struggle For Political Representation In Bolivia, Angelica T. Nieves

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The theme of ethnic identity in politics is gaining importance in countries such as Bolivia, where people recently elected their first indigenous President. The Indigenous movement has been able to incorporate themselves in the state apparatus and have produced new political policies and constitutional instruments. They represent an alternative to the "white" political elites who governed them for many decades. This study analyzes the dynamics within the Indigenous social movement in Bolivia and how they reinforced a composite vision of a participatory democratic society through political representation. The results of this participation (and, moreover, political representation) can be seen in …

Modernization From Above: Social Mobilization, Political Institutionalization And Instability: A Case Study Of Iran (1953-1979), Jeffrey Robert Cobb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This case study is in an effort to demonstrate the disastrous effects of modernization via social mobilization and economic development when initiated from above and through foreign intrusion. Initially, this research will examine previous theoretical literature regarding the political phenomenon of modernization and social mobilization. My primary focus will center on the problems that occur when rapid modernization, based on an exogenous model, is forced onto a traditional society by elites and social mobilization outpaces political institutionalization. My case study will focus on the country of Iran, as the political and societal factors of interest seem to be highly illustrative …

Cyberwar And International Law: An English School Perspective, Anthony F. Sinopoli

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cyberwar challenges future endeavors of state security. As technological capability has improved, and access to information has become more widespread the importance of the issue in today's ever-globalizing world grows each day. A primary objective is to evaluate the place of cyber-warfare against nation-states and any repercussions under an international law paradigm. Utilizing an English School perspective, emphasis will be applied to the argument that disruptive circumstances could come to fruition if international conventions are not created to bring consensus and order among nation-states on this subject. This study hypothesizes that a future application could be an agreement under international …

The Homegrown Jihad: A Comparative Study Of Youth Radicalization In The United States And Europe, William Wolfberg

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Western nations continue to face potential attacks from violent extremist organizations waging a campaign of violence in the name of political Islam. Though these attacks are traditionally labeled as originating from abroad, leaders of these extremist organizations are utilizing a new tactic of radicalizing native or naturalized citizens from within Western countries in an effort to bypass the massive defensive security apparatus Western governments have put in place since the September 11 attacks.

These undistinguishable citizens turned radical jihadists, better known as homegrown terrorists, represent a clear and present danger to the security of the United States. In an effort …

Public Participation In Emergency Management, Jason Alexander Rood

Dissertations and Theses

With disasters increasing in frequency and costs each year, this study seeks to explore ways greater public participation can assist emergency managers in their mission to keep communities safe. Specifically this study examines the policy process and administrative functions of emergency management to illuminated the benefits and hindrances involved in greater participation. This study conducted a qualitative analysis of governmental documents, disaster case studies, international research, as well as political science and administrative doctrines, to arrive at its conclusions. The results of this study reveal that the public is a largely untapped resource in the emergency management field. Engaging the …

Carl Schmitt's Radical Democracy: Schmitt, Hobbes And The Return To Political Identity, Ndifreke Ette

LSU Master's Theses

Scholarly treatments of the controversial German jurist Carl tend to be bipolar: His writings are either scrutinized for totalitarian leanings or his flirtations with Nazism excused as unfortunately opportunistic. One of the more fruitful points to begin an exploration of Schmitt’s thought is in his interpretation of Thomas Hobbes. Schmitt criticized Hobbes both for ignoring the historical backdrop to the Leviathan myth, and also for prefiguring liberalism with his distinction between conscience and obedience. In recruiting Hobbes, this paper suggests that though Schmitt’s concern about the technologization of politics through liberalism was paramount, it was in support of a radical …

Local Political Knowledge And Assessments Of Citizen Competence, Lee Shaker

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article contrasts the national and local political knowledge of a random sample of 993 Philadelphians with the aim of enhancing the scholarly understanding of citizen competence. Empirical study of citizen competence extends back more than fifty years, but the survey data that have been brought to bear upon the topic are almost exclusively focused on national-level politics. Consequently, sweeping conclusions about the competence of the American public rest upon a narrow foundation. The comparisons in this article depict a slew of differences in the distribution of knowledge across national and local politics, many of which challenge established notions of …

Whose Budget? Our Budget? Broadening Political Stakeholdership Via Participatory Budgeting, Celina Su

Publications and Research

In this thought piece, I attempt to contextualize New York City’s inaugural participatory budgeting (PB) process in the larger landscape of American political participation. I discuss how the bottom-up way in which stakeholders wrote the process’s rules in the first place, alongside the core role played by the two lead organizations, helped to broaden notions of stakeholdership among constituents. Ultimately, the first year’s primary achievement regarding political participation was not a specific set of outcomes, but a debut as an unfinished form of governance—one that began to engage traditionally marginalized constituents, to trigger their political imagination, and to prompt them …

Ngos In The Transnational Development Network: Exploring Relational Resources In The Promotion Of Food Security, Mariah Kraner, David Todd Kinsella

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Programming decisions by international NGOs operating in the area of development are a function of both humanitarian and pragmatic concerns. Helping communities establish sustainable agricultural cooperatives to address problems of undernutrition, for example, motivates programs implemented by NGOs in the food security sector. But NGOs are strategic actors and must also be attentive to organizational imperatives in regard to funding. These concerns relate to donor preferences and the reality that aid projects must demonstrate tangible results. This paper examines the network of organizations responding to the needs of the one billion people worldwide who live in food insecure environments. We …

Systemic Propaganda As Ideology And Productive Exchange, Gerald Sussman

International & Global Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Informed by the works of Marx and his progeny (Lukács, Gramsci, Althusser) as well as more recent marxian scholarship, the purpose of this paper is to explore the role of ideology and propaganda in the production and circulation of commodities and in the informalization of the contemporary workplace, particularly in the context of the promotional economy, politics, and culture of the United States. The heightened functions of media and communication technologies mark the pinnacle expression of late capitalism—the production, reproduction and colonization of the sphere of consciousness as a necessary condition for the maintenance of the corporate state as it …

Immigration, The Welfare State And Income Inequality In Sixteen Oecd Countries, 1970-2007, Ping Xu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Many western democracies witnessed roaring levels of immigration and inequality in the past four decades. In spite of speculations that immigration is a contributing factor of the rising income inequality, existing studies do not have a consistent finding relating to this relationship. This dissertation utilizes new data sources to explore the relationship between immigration and inequality.My initial exploration points to the fact that immigration significantly leads to increases in post-redistribution income inequality in 16 OECD countries, but does not have any effect on pre-redistribution income inequality. I contend that it is because immigrants as non-citizens are often times not entitled …

Civic Education And Democratic Backsliding In The Wake Of Kenya’S Post-2007 Election Violence, Steven E. Finkel, Jeremy Horowitz, Reynaldo T. Rojo-Mendoza

Dartmouth Scholarship

This article examines two unexplored questions concerning the impact of civic education programs in emerging democracies: (1) whether such programs have longer-terms effects and (2) whether civic education can be effective under conditions of democratic “backsliding.” We investigate these questions in the context of a large-scale civic education program in Kenya just before the disputed 2007 election that sparked a wave of ethnic clashes and brought the country to the brink of civil war. Analysis of a survey of 1,800 “treatment” and 1,800 “control” individuals shows that the program had significant long-term effects on variables related to civic competence and …

The Women And Peace Hypothesis In The Age Of Nancy Pelosi: Can Female Leaders Bring About World Peace?, Jeannette Haynie

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The women and peace hypothesis suggests that women are more likely than men to choose peace and compromise over violent conflict, whether as ordinary citizens or as government leaders. I test this concept by analyzing the percent of women in the parliaments and executive cabinets of 93 nations over a 31-year-period, comparing these figures to the presence of violent interstate conflicts for each country-year. Controlling for wealth, democratic status, national capabilities, military expenditures, and contiguity, I find moderate support for the women and peace hypothesis. This support continues when democratic system type is interacted with the measured office. While women …

Violence Against Women In Pakistan, Amina Bath

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Child Soldiers: Solutions From A Humanistic Lens, Ursula Wylan

Master's Theses

This paper examines the issue of Child Soldiers using case studies of three conflicts in which children were found fighting. The paper also looks at the CSPA and the Presidential waiver of four countries by President Obama.

Systems At Play: The Construction Of International Systems In Social Impact Games, Jorge Albor

Master's Theses

This thesis explores how game makers conceive of and navigate the intersection between digital systems and real world systems by asking, how can social impact game designers shape procedural rhetoric to effectively address complex real world systems with digital systems? By examining three game case studies, I reach four significant findings regarding player agency, subversive play, design approaches to scale, and game difficulty in regards to systems fluency.

Territoriality, Sovereignty And The Nation-State System In Israel-Palestine: The Creation Of The Palestinian Bantustan “State” And Shifting Palestinian Resistance Tactics, Sara Nichole Hughes

Master's Theses

The conflict in Israel-Palestine is over the sovereign control of territory and takes place within a global framework made up of clearly defined nation-states. It is within this framework that Israeli colonial expansion and construction of the separation barrier in the West Bank attempt to maximize Israeli annexation of the oPt while creating a Palestinian Bantustan “state” to contain and isolate the Palestinian people in non-sovereign territorial enclaves through the use of territoriality as a strategy for exercising sovereignty. In response to this obvious process of cantonization, Palestinians are resisting by supporting Israeli annexation – of the West Bank and …

The Path To Peace: Conflict Theory And Northern Ireland’S Troubles (1968-1998), Ruairi Wiepking

Master's Theses

This paper is a qualitative historical analysis of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Over a period of approximately thirty years, sectarian violence in Northern Ireland dominated the headlines of newspapers in both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Despite this violent history, Northern Ireland has enjoyed relative peace and stability since the passage of the Belfast Agreement in 1998. This paper aims to better understand why and how Northern Ireland endured a generation of brutal sectarian violence and emerged into a new era of peace and mutual understanding. In doing so, this paper incorporates theories from peace and conflict studies …

Westernization And Muslims In Western Europe, Sean Manahan

Honors Theses

Many scholars argue that as a whole, Muslims in Europe are not successfully integrating into European society. The reasons why are debated and still far from understood. It is clear, however, that many Muslim communities are negatively affected by many socioeconomic factors, leaving them poor and viewed as outcasts. Given these circumstances, scholars have suggested that some individuals join radical Islamist groups to give meaning to their lives and secure a sense of inclusion because they do not feel a part of the country in which they live. However, this fails to explain the numerous cases of highly educated, middle …

Midterm Elections Used To Gauge President's Reelection Chances, Desmond D. Wallace

Honors Theses

Conventional analysis of midterm elections is usually in relation to the previous presidential election, or the issues or events leading up towards a presidential election. Rarely is midterm elections considered in terms of whether the president, or his party in some cases, would retain the White House in the next presidential election. The focus of this research is to determine whether midterm elections can serve as a predictive indicator of the outcome in the following presidential election. For decades, scholars have speculated as to why the president's party suffers losses at the midterm election. An examination of these theories can …

Explaining Investment Policies In Microstates: The Case Of The Fiji Islands, Sudarsan Kant

Dissertations

Prevailing theories have failed to take into account the development of policy and institutions in microstates that are engineered to attract investments in areas of comparative advantage as these small islands confront the challenges of globalization and instead have emphasized migration, remittances and foreign aid (MIRAB) as an explanation for the survival of microstates in the global economy. This dissertation challenges the MIRAB model as an adequate explanation of investment strategy in microstates and argues that comparative advantage is a better theory to explain policy behavior of microstates. These small economies can take advantage of their exotic locations and natural …

Russian Spring: Putin's Time May Be Up, Nicholas Hayes

University Chair in Critical Thinking Publications

No abstract provided.

Security Cooperation Poorly Defined, Nathan L. Fenell

Master's Theses

Security cooperation is a vital component to the national security of the United States. Despite this fact, insufficient military or academic attention has been applied to the subject. The academic and professional void created by this inattention has led academic, journalistic, and military professionals to misuse the term security cooperation, and stray from its doctrinal description as defined by the Department of Defense Dictionary and Associated Military Terms. The academic rigor required to properly express the concept of security cooperation as a peace-time strategy has been absent from both the Department of Defense, and the Department of State, and …

American Exceptionalism, U.S. Foreign Policy, And The 2012 Presidential Campaign, Jason Edwards

Communication Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Context On African American Political Participation And Partisanship, Andre L. Smith

Dissertations

What explains the intensity of African American partisan attraction to the Democratic Party? This dissertation investigates how environmental or contextually based theory informs our understanding of partisan affiliation and political mobilization in general and specifically for African Americans. The dissertation research focuses on the extent to which geographic context at the neighborhood level influences the strength of black partisan attachment. I hypothesize that interactions at the neighborhood level affect African American partisanship; specifically, the racial composition of neighborhoods affects the strength of Democratic affiliation. The data used in this study is based on survey data of individuals residing in concentrated …