Political Science Commons^™

The United Nations Security Council A Review Of The Security Council And Their Ability To Uphold The Charter, Kristin Parker

Dissertations and Theses

Under the United Nations Charter the Security Council was mandated to ensure the maintenance of international peace and security. Within the Security Council, the five permanent members, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russian Federation and China have special veto powers that have enabled them to greatly impact the international crisis across the globe. During the Cold War, the United States and then Soviet Union exercised the veto to enforce their political and ideological will rather than to uphold the UN Charter. Several events such as the Korean War, the Suez Canal Crisis and the fight for Namibian independence …

State And Nation-Building, Stabilization, And Development In Afghanistan, Maedeh Asadzadeh Barzi

Dissertations and Theses

"Afghanistan is emerging from more than two decades of conflict, capped by a severe nationwide drought in 1999-2001, and faces a complex, interrelated set of political, administrative, economic, and social challenge. The objective of this study was to analyze Afghanistan's human development based on specific criteria such as economic inequality and poverty, corruption, public health and most specifically children and women's health. This thesis identifies Afghanistan's challenges and impediments to development and state-building in the past nine years. I further argue that Afghanistan was successful in economic and public health matters due to the institutions that were built at the …

Never Again; Working Toward An Effective Early Warning System For Genocide Prevention, Alyssa Lopez

Dissertations and Theses

“Never again” expressed the commitment made by allied forces for the prevention of genocide. In the 59 years since the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, it has evolved into an erga omnes obligation and a jus cogen (preemptory) norm. Genocide prevention, however, remains a highly controversial issue as it draws from the concept of universality central to human rights discourse at the same time as it changes dominant conceptualizations of state sovereignty. This thesis assesses the effectiveness of existing practices, norms and risk assessment/ genocide early warning systems in reducing the …

Haitian Diaspora Impact On Haitian Socio-Political And Economic Development, Sharleen Rigueur

Dissertations and Theses

"There is a new perspective developing within the international community on Diasporas and their potential to assist in the development process of their country of origin. The discussion began from the realization that transnational flows of remittances from sending countries (core) to receiving countries (periphery) increasingly surpass donor contributions to developing countries. The argument further discusses different socio-economic strategies to use when diasporic communities residing in developed countries (core) are assisting their homeland (periphery). This paper will look at the Haitian Diaspora in the United States and its active transnational link to Haiti. Since the days of post-Duvalierism, the Haitian …

Structurally Unbalanced: Cyclical And Structural Deficits In California And The Intermountain West, Matthew Murray, Susan Clark-Johnson, Mark Muro, Jennifer Vey, Brookings Mountain West, Morrison Institute For Public Policy

Brookings Mountain West Publications

Though the Great Recession may be officially over, economic recovery is slow and tentative, particularly in California and much of the Intermountain West. Among other challenges, the protracted downturn in these states has exposed and aggravated a huge public-sector fiscal crisis—with disconcerting implications for citizens and states’ long-term economic health. This brief takes a careful look at the fiscal situation in Arizona, California, Colorado, and Nevada, examining both their serious cyclical budget shortfalls—those resulting from the recession and its aftermath—as well as the critical longer-term structural imbalances between revenues and expenditures that have developed in Arizona, California, and, to a …

Why Does The United States Give Foreign Aid?, Abalo Awesso

Masters Theses

This thesis examined many controversies surrounding the distribution of U.S. foreign aid, most precisely the factors explaining the allocation of U.S. foreign aid, the congressional foreign policy behavior related to foreign aid decisions, and the impact of foreign lobbying. The findings suggest that the United States' security interests appear to be the central basis on which the United States distributes its Gross Bilateral Official Development Assistance (ODA). Meanwhile, the congressional foreign policy behavior reveals that even though the Democrats are more likely to sponsor most foreign aid bills the Democratic Party's control in Congress does not guarantee that all or …

Alliance Management Of Post-Cold War Us-Israeli Relations, Wun Liong Chau

Lingnan Theses

There is always a controversial debate on why the US-Israeli relationship can enjoy lengthy endurance (even after the end of the Cold War). Scholars have traditionally offered explanations through either the strategic role of Israel to the US, or domestic factors including the Jewish lobbies in the US, or the cultural affinities between the two states. However, they tend to emphasize the significance of only one particular dimension, marginalizing possible insights from competitive dimensions.

This research aims to offer a different approach to study US-Israeli relations through alliance management theories. Although there are no formal military treaties between the US …

Human Trafficking For Labor Purposes An Analysis Of Immigration Policy And Economic Forces Within The United States, Candace G. Owen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Human trafficking is an international crisis which has emerged as a human rights issue of the highest priority for many nations. This is not a new occurrence, although the onset of globalization has provoked increased intensity in this international crime. Recent studies, including the U.S. State Department’s 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report have predicted that the recent global economic crisis will inflate these numbers to an even larger number of victims. This thesis will investigate these phenomena ultimately asking: Do immigration policies and economic conditions contribute to the recent proliferation in cases of human trafficking for labor purposes? Moreover with …

Does Foreign Aid Promote Development? A Study Of The Effects Of Foreign Aid On Development In Sub-Saharan Africa, Rachael J. Gray

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Foreign aid aims to improve economic conditions and quality of life in developing countries. The literature on the efficacy of foreign aid to date has been inconclusive; yet there is some evidence that institutional factors may condition the relationship between aid and development. This research focuses on the effects of foreign aid on development, taking into consideration the effects of political institutional factors as intervening in the connection between aid and development. Specifically, this study considers the effects of democracy (political rights and civil liberties) and level of corruption on the relationship between aid and development in sub-Saharan Africa. Development …

Water Politics In The Middle East A Multicase Approach To Regional Water Shortage, Holly Mulholland

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Water shortage is a salient issue in the Middle East commonly overshadowed by more sensational topics such as the oil crisis and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. There is a debate among scholars as to whether water shortages in the Middle East will destabilize the region into armed conflict. Realists argue that non sustainable water sources will be the catalyst which will inevitably lead states to fight one another in a zero-sum game over limited water resources. Liberal Functionalists argue that there are precedents for multilateral cooperation and a technical approach may hold the key to providing solutions to the current water …

Misunderstanding Congress: Statutory Interpretation, The Supermajoritarian Difficulty, And The Separation Of Powers, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Every lawyer's theory of statutory interpretation carries with it an idea of Congress, and every idea of Congress, in turn, carries with it an idea of the separation of powers. In this article, the author critiques three dominant academic theories of statutory interpretation--textualism, purposivism, and game theory--for their assumptions about Congress and the separation of powers. She argues that each academic theory fails to account for Congress's dominant institutional features: "the electoral connection," the "supermajoritarian difficulty," and the "principle of structure-induced ambiguity." This critique yields surprising conclusions, rejecting both standard liberal and conservative views on statutory interpretation.

"Plain" meaning, it …

The Game Of Life: Designing A Gamification System To Increase Current Volunteer Participation And Retention In Volunteer-Based Nonprofit Organizations, Ya Chiang Fu

Undergraduate Student Research Awards

No abstract provided.

The Coalition Of The Unwilling: Contentious Politics, Political Opportunity Structures, And Challenges For The Contemporary Peace Movement, Victoria Carty

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

The Bush Doctrine, which was installed after the 9-11 attacks on the United States under the guise of the war on terrorism, postulated a vision of the United States as the world’s unchallenged superpower and the invasion of Iraq became one of the central fronts of this war. After failing to get approval by the United Nations for the invasion, the Bush Administration’s attempt to assemble a coalition of the willing became critical to the battle for public opinion to back the war. While the administration was able to garner some support, the coalition eventually unravelled and all troops are …

“I Would Feel Uncomfortable If My Child’S Teacher Were Gay”: Examining The Role Of Symbolic Homophobia And Political Affiliation, Michael Moore, Amy C. Moors

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Symbolic homophobia is a general negative disposition towards lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals, which is demonstrated in symbolic forms of prejudice rather than overt actions. Stigma towards lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals has transformed from overt forms of prejudice to slightly less blatant more subtle forms in recent years (Schafer & Shaw, 2009). Based on previous research, it is has also been shown that conservatives will have higher levels of symbolic homophobia. (Linneman, 2004), Thus, in order to assess the more nuanced forms of prejudice in relation to political affiliation, Study 1 created a scale to assess symbolic homophobia. …

Cacophony Or Empowerment? : Analyzing The Impact Of New Information Communication Technologies And New Social Media In Southeast Asia., Jason P. Abbott

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The capabilities, tools and websites we associate with new information communication technologies and social media are now ubiquitous. Moreover tools that were designed to facilitate innocuous conversation and social interaction have had unforeseen political impacts. Nowhere was this more visible than during the 2011 uprisings across the Arab World. From Tunis to Cairo, and Tripoli to Damascus protest movements against authoritarian rule openly utilized social networking and file sharing tools to publicize and organize demonstrations and to catalogue human rights abuses. The Arab Spring, or Jasmine Revolution, was an event that was both witnessed and played out in real time …

Review Of Neeti Nair's Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics And The Partition Of India, Geoffrey Kain

Publications

“As Neeti Nair concludes chapter 5 of her extremely impressive study of the Partition of India, Changing Homelands, she argues against the pat inclusion of Partition on a ‘trans-national’ list of ‘genocidal conflicts’ …”

A Presidency Upstaged: The Public Leadership Of George Bush, Joseph V. Hughes Jr. And Holly O. Hughes, Lori Cox Han

Political Science Faculty Books and Book Chapters

A president who distances himself from stagecraft will find himself upstaged. George H. W. Bush sought to “stay the course” in terms of policy while distancing himself from the public relations strategies employed during the administration of Ronald Reagan, his predecessor. But Bush discovered during his one-term presidency that a strategy of policy continuity coupled with mediocre communication skills “does not make for a strong public image as an effective and active leader in the White House", as author and scholar Lori Cox Han demonstrates in A Presidency Upstaged.

Incorporating extensive archival research from the George Bush Presidential Library at …

An Interactive Assessment Of Democracy: Economic And Cultural Determinants Of Democratic Development, Won Ha Reyes Gonzalez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

As democracy has become a popular form of governance, questions as to how to best develop democracies have been raised. Theories based on economic and cultural development have separately provided the academic community with interesting findings. However, theories based on economic determinants and cultural determinants give results that do not answer the question of how to develop democracies in a thoroughly satisfying manner, when approaching the question separately. This thesis tests the two methods separately and then integrates the two methods using interaction terms. By doing this we can see if economic development leads to democratic development, if cultural development …

Transferability Of Child Labor Norms: Examining The Link Between Foreign Direct Investment And Child Labor Practices In Developing Countries, Ijtsuri Anayantzin Viveros

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Why do child labor norms often fail to be transferred or enforced in developing countries even if the implementation of such norms already proved to have substantially reduced child labor practices in developed regions? In the field of international political economy, a number of studies examine how international trade in general and foreign direct investment (FDI, hereafter) in particular influence economic growth, income equality, and balance of trade in developed and developing countries. Extending the literature on international trade and investment, this thesis examines the relationship between FDI and child labor practices in developing countries.

Specifically, I investigate whether and …

Putting Experts In Their Place: The Challenge Of Expanding Participation While Solving Problems, Thad Williamson

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

This essay critically examines possibilities for expanding democratic participatory governance in light of Mark Bevir's treatment of the subject in his book Democratic Governance. The essay argues that a theory of participatory governance should retain an explicit role for expert analysis, and that the appropriate scope given to such analysis will vary by policy area. The essay also argues that the present organization of capitalist economies mandates a heavy reliance on experts, and that a full-blown account of expanding participatory governance thus must be paired with an account of how to achieve a more democratic political economy. Such an account …

Changing The People, Not Simply The President: The Limitations And Possibilities Of The Obama Presidency, In Tocquevillian Perspective, Thad Williamson

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

Attempting to elucidate what precisely Alexis de Tocqueville would have made of either Barack Obama the politician or the astonishing political phenomenon that swept the nation's first African-American president into office in 2008 is a fruitless endeavor. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville devotes relatively little attention to the presidency as an institution, and still less to the merits and accomplishments of particular presidents. In his account, what made American democracy unique and functional was neither its federalist institutional arrangements nor the virtues of its national leaders, but its culture of political participation in local democratic institutions. Tocqueville recognized the power …

The Second-Generation Effects Of Microcredit In Western Guatemala, Jordyn Elizabeth Haught

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Most microfinance institutions have assumed that positive second-generation effects follow involvement in microcredit, but the nature of these effects has been unclear since few scholars have directly focused their attention on them. To address this gap in the literature I conducted exploratory survey research in Western Guatemala in January 2011. I returned with 97 interviews conducted with 68 Guatemalans who had received a microloan at some point in their lives, and 29 who had never received a formal loan. In the sample of their 306 children, the parents of 94 had never received a loan, while the parents of 212 …

Contagion Effect: The Effects Of Regions On Individual State Democracies, Jared Kilpatrick Hundley

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

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Political Socialization Through Education As A Form Of State Building, Aldo Lopez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The objective of this study is to observe the effect of political socialization through education as a tool for state building in three case studies. A background into the topics of political socialization and civic education is made. Civic education theory is applied to the state building experiences of Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. After a qualitative review of the data available, findings are presented and discussed. Further commentary of the impact of such studies within the field of political socialization is also discussed.

The Impact Of Development On Terrorist Activity: Does Development Decrease Terrorism?, Mark Daube

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study examines the relationship between the level of development in a country and the likelihood of terrorism incidents occurring in that country. The central argument of this paper is that the level of development of a country has a curvilinear impact in the shape of an inverted-U on the likelihood of terrorist activity. This paper used a negative binomial regression in order to analyze 119 countries from 1675 to 2000. The empirical results indicate that there is support for the hypotheses of this thesis and that there is a statistically significant relationship in the shape of an inverted-U between …

The Existence, Perpetuity, And Proliferation Of Payday Loans: Impact On Vulnerable Populatons And The Regulatory Policy Process In Texas, Azuri Lizeth Gonzalez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

If you have ever driven by a street, typically not in a very wealthy neighborhood, where a store front displayed signs with words like "Instant cash!," "No Credit Check," "First loan free," then you likely witnessed the marketing of a product called a payday loan. Payday loans are a form of a short-term loan product that is usually grouped with other loan products within the subprime lending industry, alternative financial resources, or fringe economy markets. This loan product has been the focus of a number of controversial debates among consumer protection groups, financial institutions, state regulatory entities, and legislators, regarding …

Crossing The Line: Influences On Foreign Intervention In Secessionist, Deidre Conklin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Problematizing Executive Prerogative In Locke And Rousseau, Benjamin Joseph Gutierrez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The organization of this paper is composed of three main sections. The first section intensively analyzes the discourses of John Locke. Thoroughly combing through Locke's reasoning the concept six fundamental principles of executive prerogative are derived. This provides a basis for comparison and understanding.The second section investigates Jean-Jacques Rousseau's works as an alternative proposal to the static principles of Locke. In order to effectively gain insight on executive prerogative, the basis and purpose of proper governments must be thoroughly addressed. Through Rousseau's various works three tenets for proper governance are built. The factors that position Rousseau to advocate for executive …

Indigenous Political Participation: The Key To Rights Realization In The Andes, Stephanie Selekman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

"There is no way back, this is our time, the awakening of the indigenous people. We'll keep fighting till the end. Brother Evo Morales still has lots to do, one cannot think that four years are enough after 500 years of submission and oppression,” said Fidel Surco, a prominent indigenous leader, reflecting on Bolivia’s first indigenous president entering his second term (Carroll & Schipani 2009).

The Andean region is particularly appropriate for examining indigenous political rights because 34-40 million indigenous people reside mostly in this region. The actualization of human rights for Andean indigenous groups is an inherently complex issue, …

Kimberly Lanegran On Child Soldiers: Sierra Leone’S Revolutionary United Front. By Myriam Denov. Cambridge, Uk: Cambridge University Press. 2010. 234 Pp., Kimberly Lanegran

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Child Soldiers: Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front. By Myriam Denov. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2010. 234 pp.