Political Science Commons^™

Commonality, Competition, And Stereotypes: Can Whites, Blacks, And Latinos Play Politics Together In The United States, Betina Cutaia Wilkinson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The literature on racial attitudes and coalition formation has focused on Latinos and African Americans in the U.S. In this project, I present a theoretical framework exploring what whites, blacks and Latinos think of each other specifically examining perceptions of commonality, competition and stereotypes. The two major theories that I test are contact theory and the racial threat hypothesis. This project is unique in its comprehensive analysis of the precursors of coalition formation regarding African Americans, Latinos and whites and its adoption of quantitative and qualitative approaches to answer the main research questions. Moreover, very little research has explored the …

Experiential Learning Of U.S. Presidents In The Foreign Policy Decision-Making Context, Samuel Berwyn Robison

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines U.S. presidential learning—defined as a change in presidential operational code beliefs due to their experiences in office—in the foreign policy decision-making context. These beliefs are teased out from presidents’ representations of power relationships via verb usage in their speeches. A database of more than 4,000 foreign policy-related speeches obtained by the author was employed for this project, and with this data, I examine several potential dynamics of and influences on learning.

I look at trends in belief change over time, and examine the relative stability and interconnectedness of “core” versus “peripheral” beliefs. I then test the influence …

Institutional Design And The Economy: Disentangling The Effects Of Judicial Independence And Judicial Review On Economic Development, Kaitlyn Louise Sill

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Scholars, politicians, and economic leaders widely believe that an independent, efficient judiciary facilitates economic growth. However, relatively few empirical studies have been conducted to evaluate the relationship between the judiciary and the economy. As a result, we have a limited and an ambiguous understanding of the effect of courts. In this dissertation, I provide insight into the relationship between the judiciary and economic growth by disentangling judicial independence and judicial review and evaluating their effects using a large-n, comparative research design. I empirically demonstrate that judicial independence and judicial review are conceptually distinct and have independent and varying effects on …

Domination, Resistance, And Accommodation In China's One-Child Campaign, Tyrene White

Political Science Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Transnational Political Participation Among Diasporic Migrants, Amanda Hanlin

Wayne State University Dissertations

Contemporary migrants participate in a variety of dual social, political, and economic processes. Sending and receiving states overtly encourage transnational practices when they allow migrants to maintain homeland citizenship regardless of their citizenship status in their receiving communities. Yet, we know little about migrants' ability to enact their citizenship and their propensity to participate in sending and receiving state networks and structures. We know also that diasporas experience and shape transnational spaces differently than other migrants, but we have much to learn about what influences a diaspora's desire and ability to maintain a political affiliation with their homeland and to …

The Art Of Collaboration: Interlocal Collaboration In The Provision Of Fire Services In The Metropolitan Detroit Area, William David Hatley

Wayne State University Dissertations

Metropolitan regions have emerged in the United States as important economic units with numerous small local governments each providing various public services. The movement toward city-county consolidation has frequently been defeated at the polls. Frederickson (1999) argues that metropolitan areas have become so fragmented in their approach to service delivery that they constitute what he describes as a "disarticulated state", characterized by the declining salience of jurisdiction, the fuzziness of borders and an erosion of the capacity of the local jurisdiction to contain and, thereby, manage complex social, economic and political issues. Feiock (2009) contends that much of the urban …

Continuing The Gandhi Legacy: An Interview With Arun Gandhi, Geoffrey Kain

Publications

“Arun Gandhi (1934- ) is the fifth grandson of Mohandas Gandhi. Arun’s father, Manilal (1892-1956), second son of Mohandas and Kasturba Gandhi, was sent by his father to run the Phoenix Farm ashram outside of Durban, South Africa, and this is where Arun Gandhi was raised…”

Five Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know, Ann K. Vaught

Honors Theses

Operating under the assumption that the average college student knows little to nothing about the Supreme Court and significant cases in the field of American constitutional law, the author hypothesizes that this ignorance is due not to an inability to understand the material, but an unwillingness on the part of the average student to expend the effort necessary to decipher the "legalese" of an average Supreme Court opinion. The author also hypothesizes that it is the high and lofty language of the opinions that generally disenchants the reader, and not the information itself. Therefore, as a means of testing this …

Countering The Majoritarian Difficulty, Stefanie A. Lindquist, Amanda Frost

Scholarship@WashULaw

Most state court judges are elected to office, and thus must be attentive to voter preferences just like other elected officials. Critics of judicial elections fear that subjecting judges to majoritarian pressures jeopardizes the rights of disfavored groups and undermines the rule of law, and accordingly call for their abolition. The reality, however, is that judicial elections are firmly entrenched in thirty-eight states, and thus appear to be a permanent part of the legal landscape.

This article suggests that the so-called “majoritarian difficulty” posed by elected judges can be tempered by regular interactions with appointed, life-tenured federal judges, who are …

Yitzhak Rabin And The Price Of Peace, Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

A society that wishes to remain free and self-governing must learn to recognize that endemic political violence, including the symbolic violence of character assassination, is an invitation to either tyranny from without or conquest from without. As Edmund Burke put it: ‘Men of intemperate minds cannot be free; their passions forge their fetters.” As a general rule, we might conclude that a fixation on the purity of political outcomes at the expense of the integrity of the political process leads people away from politics to the realm of ideology, from civility to fanaticism. This is the way nations and civilizations …

John R. Bolton: How Barack Obama Is Endangering Our National Sovereignty: A Study Guide, Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

E Pluribus Unum? (Geopolitica), Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Angelo M. Codevilla: A Student’S Guide To International Relations Study Guide, Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Brian P. Janiskee And Ken Masugi: Democracy In California Study Guide, Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Wilhelm Roepke: Robbing Peter To Pay Paul Study Guide, Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Bush On The Home Front, By John D. Graham, Michael A. Genovese

Political Science and International Relations Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Centrist Rhetoric: The Production Of Political Transcendence In The Clinton Presidency, By Antonio De Velasco, Michael A. Genovese

Political Science and International Relations Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Budgeting In Japan: How Much Do Institutions Matter?, Gene Park

Political Science and International Relations Faculty Works

In the past decade, the Japanese government has revamped its budget institutions twice. This paper examines how these changes have changed the configuration of power among the actors in the budget process. It also explores the implications of these changes for the management of the nation's finances.

The Many Faces Of Strict Scrutiny: How The Supreme Court Changes The Rules In Race Cases, Evan Gerstmann, Christopher Shortell

Political Science and International Relations Faculty Works

In this paper, we argue that there is no single test called strict scrutiny when the Court considers claims of racial discrimination. In fact, the Court changes the rules depending on why and how the government is using race. By examining racial redistricting, remedial affirmative action, and diversity-based affirmative action cases, we show how the Court uses at least three very different versions of strict scrutiny. The costs of maintaining the fiction of unitary strict scrutiny is high. In the area of racial profiling, for example, courts refuse to apply strict scrutiny for fear that it will either overly hamper …

Dammed And The Damned: Draining The Bucket Dry, Carla Steiger

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates how people displaced from the construction of large dams in seek environmental justice. I studied the importance of regime type, the creation of protest groups and the formation of alliances with national, international organizations, and the media. In a comparison between protest movements against the Three Gorges Dam in China and the Sardar Sarovar Dam in India, displaced populations suffered from loss of community, livelihood, and health and were victimized by corrupt actors that supported the dams. The rapid economic development of these two countries emerged as a major point of comparison between the two. Regime type …

The Sources Of International Law: Some Philosophical Reflections, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

It seems only natural to begin the study of international law with a description of its sources. After all, whether as practitioner or scholar a person cannot begin to ask or answer questions about international law until he or she has some sense of what the law is. This requires in turn a basic grasp of the processes whereby international legal norms and regimes come to exist. Thus students of international law must engage immediately with some of the most basic questions in the philosophy of law: what is law, and what is a legal order or system.

These questions …

Understanding Hayek, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although some of this will be familiar to a number of you all,I will talk a bit about Friedrich A. Hayek since I am goingfirst. I’ll say a little bit about his life, how he came to theideas that he became so famous for espousing, and then a little bitabout his liberalism and the contribution he has made to liberaltheory and to intellectual life.

Political Traditions: Conservatism, Liberalism, And Civic Republicanism, Thad Williamson

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

How unequal authority and power can be justified is a central question of political theory and of leadership studies (Price & Hicks, 2006). Indeed, while in everyday language leadership is commonly viewed as a positive term and the word leader connotes respect, in some political vernaculars, the very idea of leadership is suspect, if not embarrassing. For instance, one of the most influential public intellectuals of the late 20th century, Noam Chomsky, consistently refers to leadership in disparaging way. In Chomsky's (2005) view, leadership is a code word intended to justify class rule, vastly unequal political and economic power, and …

Evaluating The Vice Presidency Using The Effective Model: A Look At Gore And Cheney, Trisha Miller

Masters Theses

Historically, the office of the Vice President has been one of little importance. The Mondale vice presidency transformed the office into one of more prestige. Significant' changes have occurred with recent vice presidents, Al Gore and Dick Cheney. For this reason, a way to evaluate the vice presidents becomes imperative. Using the Hargrove model for presidential effectiveness, an applicatio:q can be made to the vice presidencies of Gore and Cheney. The research questions addressed are: vVere Albert Gore and Richard Cheney eventful or event-making vice presidents? Were they effective? The analysis found Gore to be effective while Cheney was not …

Engineering A New Form Of Enclosure: International Convergence In Gmo Regulation, Jessica Altif

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As society begins to recognize its impact on ecological systems, the belief that modern political institutions can offer a sense of control and certainty, as well as protect the health of its citizens, is increasingly questioned. In an era of uncertainty, faith in science and technology to alleviate industrial impacts on the environment is often embraced by policymakers yet questioned by the public who see the authoritative role of the sciences in the political sphere as contributing to global risk. The development of biotechnology, specifically genetically modified food, places an anthropocentric focus on resolving and/or adapting to environmental degradation, further …

Have Nominating Conventions Lost Power?, Tyler Branz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Do conventions still have relevance in the modern political world? Some call them glorified television infomercials for presidential candidates while others refer to them as admired pillars of American political history. Whichever viewpoints one identifies with, presidential conventions are interesting to study historically, and can be studied analytically. The following case studies examine the institution of the nominating convention: what they do, how they form, what they have accomplished and how they affect the voters. This study finds that conventions are still meaningful in American politics, particularly for affecting party unity, candidate image and, to a lesser degree, party platform.

Women, Work And Welfare: A Case Study Of Germany, The Uk, And Sweden, Meredith Legg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how different welfare state regimes affect gender relations by examining variations in welfare regimes and outcomes for women between Western European countries. The research seeks to understand how the diverse systems of social provision affect women: particularly with regard to their position in the labor market and in their ability to balance occupational and domestic work. Using a comparative, qualitative approach, I compare three Western European welfare states (Germany, the United Kingdom, and Sweden) to evaluate gender-relevant welfare policy with female employment rates, unemployment rates, and wage differentials. Welfare states and labor market policies affect outcomes for …

Understanding The Split-Ticket Voter, Janelle Middents

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will focus on split ticket voting. Split ticket voting refers to an aspect of voting behavior where the individual will cast votes for different political parties for different offices. Through the development of countless theories and utilizing data, political scientists have managed to shed some light as to why an individual may engage in split-ticket voting. However, many of these studies have been too narrow in their focus, for instance, relying on a specific election without taking into account some major variables that provide the foundation for voting behavior. The purpose of this study is to provide scholars …

A Realist Interpretation Of U.S.Relations With China, Xiansheng Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Realism theory provides the most powerful explanation for the state of war and the rise and fall of great powers. It expounds the important concepts and themes like national sovereignty, security, survival, interests, balance of power, balance of terror, alliance, dominance, hegemony and polarity. Realism can be classified as classical realism, structural realism and neoclassical realism. In recent years, liberalism, globalism and constructivism also have greatly influenced academics and policy-makers under the new phenomena of globalization and terrorism. This paper explores how classical realism theory has been applied to and revealed in the issue of American policy towards China. The …

Understanding Terrorism: Religious & Political Dimensions, Christopher Cusano

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Terrorism in the twenty-first century has had one of greatest effects on the status quo of international relations, peace and war. It has become the 'specter' of our era and in many instances, it has been referred to as the predominant threat of modern civilization. Furthermore, it has the potential to drastically change the world we live in. For these reasons it has rightfully earned our attention and focus. Many efforts to understand terrorism have fallen short of recognizing the underlying causes. In many cases, acts of terror have either been of purely political motivation or have had socioeconomic conditions …