American Politics Commons^™

Us And Them: Populism In The United States, Julia E. Pfau

Honors Theses

The term “populism” has been thrown around recently—heedless of any cohesive meaning—to describe a wide variety of politics. But can we define populism with sufficient clarity and precision as to make it a useful term with which to analyze political rhetoric? This thesis weaves together the fragmented literature on populism to invent a unique definition: populism in the United States is a mode of political persuasion characterized by an effort to promote the interests of “the people,” understood to be a monolithic and moral group of ordinary Americans, against a “corrupt” elite or establishment which obstructs these interests. Using this …

To Believe Or Not To Believe: Voters’ Responses To Sexual Assault Allegations In Politics, Emily Brandes

Honors Theses

Since the viral 2017 #MeToo movement, public opinion on cases of sexual misconduct has been shaped by the mainstream media coverage of high-profile stories. A shift in public attitude towards these issues has encouraged more victims to come forward and share their stories, many detailing harrowing events perpetrated by successful businessmen and politicians. Credible accusations continue to come forward, and while some end in legal action, many do not, and perpetrators face little to no consequences. I examined how individuals respond to issues of sexual misconduct and assault in politics, and based on the severity of the accusation, how they …

Politicized Prayer: How Thoughts And Prayers Hinder Gun Legislation, Hope Cody

Honors Theses

Thoughts and prayers are a strategic rhetorical tool, rather than a religious sentiment, when it comes to gun reform in the US. I confirm my three hypotheses: that the rhetorical use of thoughts and prayers do rise sharply after a mass shooting, that the use is centered in the gun rights coalition, and the use of thoughts and prayers is intentional. This establishes a direct link between the sending of thoughts and prayers and the lack of measurable gun reform laws in the United States.

An Analysis Of Natural Courts: How Vacancies And Replacements On The Supreme Court Best Determine The Ideological Shifts Of The Court And What Effect Longevity Has On Ideology., Lauren Moses

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to explore natural courts and ideology among members of the Supreme Court. Most studies of the Supreme Court allocate focus to the chief justice such that the justice and his ideology determines whether the Court will be described as liberal or conservative for the chief's tenure. However, this thesis questions this model of distinction for the highest court in the land. An analysis of natural courts from Marshall through Roberts specifically targets the highest and lowest ideological shifts between natural courts to understand how vacancies and replacements manipulate the ideology of the Court. In addition to the …

Y'All Like Ike: Tennessee, The Solid South, And The 1952 Presidential Election, Cameron N. Regnery

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the changing nature of politics in the American South, specifically through the 1952 presidential election in the state of Tennessee. For much of the South’s history, the region was dominated by the Democratic party, earning it the nickname the “Solid South”. Following the Civil War and Reconstruction, the South became an aggressively one-party region in which the Republican party found little electoral success and the Democratic party reigned supreme. This partisanship began showing signs of fracturing in 1948 when southern Democrats began to leave the party over racial issues. The presidency of Harry S. Truman (1945-1953) further …

“[Don’T] Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor...” A Study On The Trump Administration’S Unprecedented Reforms To The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program And Their Implications, Savannah Day

Honors Theses

From 2017 to 2020, the Trump administration cut United States refugee admissions tenfold. These reforms come unprecedented to the 40-year-old resettlement program (USRAP). By critically reviewing literature on this topic as well as conducting eight original interviews with five national nonprofits contracted by the Department of State to do refugee resettlement casework, this study sought to identify the implications of the Trump administration’s reforms to the program. Once implications were identified, I used the applied frameworks of program model as well as Michael Worth’s sociological and political science theories of American nonprofit-government relations to better inform and guide the study. …

Perceptions Of Judicial Bias In The Mississippi Judiciary, Allyson Avant

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to explore Mississippians’ opinions towards the Mississippi state judiciary and further examine any differences in such opinions across race, gender, knowledge, and education levels. In doing so, it is possible to gain further understanding of the ways that historical context and knowledge influence perceptions of the state judiciary. Data collected from an anonymous survey of approximately 500 individuals shed some light on the perceptions Mississippians have towards the state judiciary. While many of the results were generalizable across various demographics, African Americans consistently held more negative views of their state judiciary than their White …

Constitutional War Powers Of The United States: The Founding Prescription And Historical Adherence, Blake Annexstad

Honors Theses

When crafting the United States Constitution, America’s Founders carefully prescribed an institutional balance of the Nation’s war powers between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government. To examine the intentions of the Founders regarding the Nation’s war powers as well as how American leadership has adhered to this intent post-ratification, this study carefully analyzes the circumstances which compelled this balance as well as its application throughout the history of the American experiment. Following an examination of these circumstances and the history of the United States, it is clear that American leadership, despite adhering to the Founders’ intentions for …

Measuring Religious Demographic Group Threat Among Americans And Its Impacts On Their Political Beliefs, Karsen Bailey

Honors Theses

Identity is one of the key drivers of American political behavior. Among these identities, be it partisan, ethnic, class, etc., religious identity has been more or less assumed to be one of the more powerful identities. I set out to measure how the threat of Christianity’s decline in the United States impacts the salience of religious identity and feelings towards religion-adjacent policies. Building off of an experimental design from Major et al (2016), I hypothesized that when exposed to data showing the decline of religiosity in the United States, subjects would demonstrate both a stronger religious identity and more conservative …

Political Scandal And Party Identification, Michael Sekich

Honors Theses

How do voters react to political scandal, especially when a like-minded partisan is involved? We look to answer that question by utilizing the concept of self-monitoring. Before collecting the data, expectations were that high self-monitors would identify as an independent when exposed to the partisan political scandal. But, when presented with a non-partisan political scandal, high self-monitors would feel more comfortable identifying as their own partisanship. This study offers mixed results. We found that high self-monitors had the only meaningful differences, and low self-monitors did not display significant differences across the versions. The Republican scandal yielded the most meaningful response, …

Ground To A Halt: A Mixed Methods Approach To Understanding U.S. Government Shutdowns, Ian R. Baum

Honors Theses

Government shutdowns are a relatively frequent, yet understudied, phenomenon in American politics. To better understand these shutdowns, I present them as competitions between parties in two areas: First, the policy space, in which each party tries to end a shutdown with a policy that coincides with that party’s ideology and; second, the public opinion space, in which each party attempts to win support from the public. I use both qualitative (case studies), and quantitative (formal and statistical models) methods to evaluate shutdowns using this lens. Through my case studies, I found that parties which propose shutdown-ending policies that are close …

All The President’S Men? Politicization And Executive Control Over The Rulemaking Process, Josh Goldberg

Honors Theses

In the age of the administrative state, the battle over who controls the federal bureaucracy and the rulemaking process decides much of the direction of American public policy. The president has emerged from this milieu as the strongest political actor in the administrative state because of their ability to leverage political appointees and the centralized EOP to protect their agenda from entrepreneurial bureaucrats and a rivalrous Congress. Yet, little is known about the effectiveness of political appointees as a tool of presidential control outside of case studies of individual agencies in the large federal bureaucracy. Using data from the Office …

Can We All Just Get Along?: Affective Polarization And Its Impact On College Campuses, Sam Rosenblatt

Honors Theses

American politics have become increasingly polarized, but not just in how sharply we disagree on issues. There has also been a rise in affective polarization, or how positively we view members of our own party and how negatively we view those of the opposite party. This behavior manifests on college campuses, where some students struggle to discuss politics with those who disagree with them while others refuse to engage in such conversations at all. While affective polarization is not a new phenomenon, it appears especially pronounced on college campuses following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. My thesis seeks to understand …

The Emerging Millennial Majority, Kendra Kitchens

Honors Theses

This thesis operates under the framework of two theories: the realignment theory and the generational theory. I focus on a model of realignment developed by Arthur Paulson which determines three criteria that are necessary for a political realignment to occur: 1.) a new governing coalition, which is 2.) lasting and durable with 3.) a new policy agenda. A realignment can be driven by various factors, one of which being through generational replacement. Generational change can lead to a realignment when a new generation of voters emerges with unique political views that are likely to remain over time and cause the …

Challenges Remain In Conducting Adequate Congressional Oversight, Alexander Crouch

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

"Let Bartlet Be Bartlet:" The Presidential Politics Of Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing, Marjory Madeline Zuk

Honors Theses

From 1999-2006, Aaron Sorkin’s television show The West Wing entertained audiences with a weekly backstage pass to life in the White House. While the show featured plotlines regarding the characters’ personal lives, it also centered the policy decisions of President Bartlet and his staffers, and it informed audiences about political issues and tools. With background research, I confirmed that the style of the show was a valuable educational tool, as it used both episodic and thematic framing devices when discussing different political issues. My understanding of its ability to influence audiences’ understandings of political issues lead my interest in understanding …

Electoral Dysfunction: Assessing State Electoral Laws And Turnout In Presidential Elections, Ellie S. Krossa

Honors Theses

Due to the United States’ shockingly low turnout in comparison to other Western democracies, many states around the country have enacted laws to increase the number of people who participate in presidential elections. Scholars have found mixed results when testing the effects of specific electoral reforms in individual states, but few have looked at comprehensive models to test the overall effects of these reforms on turnout. This thesis examines the ways in which electoral reforms across all fifty states have led to increases or decreases of turnout in presidential elections. It utilizes a comprehensive longitudinal model accounting for electoral reform …

Start Where You Are: How American Youth Are Finding Fulfillment Through Nontraditional Forms Of Political Involvement, Johnathan Alfonzo Coleman

Honors Theses

Young people involvement in the political system has long been viewed through the negative lens of claims that the younger generation is not participating enough. Political scientists, strategists, and older citizens assert that the youth is uninvolved and uninterested. In this thesis, I sought to examine how, in 2019, young people are viewing their involvement within the political system. This was done in an effort to claim that young people are participating, but not through the traditional processes. My hypothesis is that young people are finding more fulfillment in participating in nontraditional modes of political involvement, the reasoning behind the …

Who Runs The World: The Impact Of The Gender Of Clerks On The Legal Profession, Taylor Bernstein

Honors Theses

This paper investigates the role of gender on law clerks from the federal appellate clerks. There has been significant scholarship on the importance of the gender of judges and on the role and influence of law clerks; however, to this date there has been no analysis of how the gender of law clerks may or may not influence the clerkship experience. This honors thesis seeks to address that question and shed light on important aspects of the federal judiciary and the legal profession. I have approached this inquiry through descriptive and qualitative analysis, focusing on law clerks from this millennium. …

Managing Church, Politics, And The End Of The World: Analysis Of Baptist Ecclesiology, Eschatology, And The Remobilization Of Conservative Baptists In The Moral Majority, Nathan Taylor Barron

Honors Theses

The sudden and formidable political mobilization of fundamentalist Christians in the mid-to-late 1970’s quickly garnered the attention of politicians, pastors, and political scientists alike. Since the success of the Moral Majority in the 1980s, social science researchers have dedicated special attention to the intersection of religion and social life; however, such considerations have largely neglected to sufficiently discover why fundamentalist Christians were seemingly predisposed for the high levels of political activity characteristic of the Moral Majority. Building on a historical analysis of Baptist ecclesiological and eschatological development, the purpose of this research is to consider the theological framework behind the …

Party Identification At Western Michigan University, Melissa Heinz

Honors Theses

A high self-monitor is an individual who changes his/her political views to improve an impression made to others. This past election contained very controversial candidates making individuals very reluctant to show strong support for either party. My thesis topic examines the link between self-monitoring and party identification after the controversial election. I will be testing to see Western Michigan University students’ willingness to disguise political views based on what others think of them by using three different versions of the same survey. Many students are in positions on campus as well as off campus that require them to present themselves …

The Effects Of Repealing The Estate Tax And Reducing The Corporate Tax Rate Coupled With A Repatriation Act, Trenton Vanderlende

Honors Theses

Given that significant U.S. federal tax reform is taking place for the first time in over 30 years, this paper examines how changing specific tax provisions may affect the average individual taxpayer as well as the wealthiest 1% of Americans. Three potential federal tax law changes are addressed: repealing the estate tax, reducing the corporate statutory income tax rate, and offering a repatriation holiday for remitting the foreign profits earned by U.S. businesses. These changes are analyzed using publicly available data from U.S. Congressional hearings, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Based on this …

Analyzing The Legislative Productivity Of Congress During The Obama Administration, Zachary Hunkins

Honors Theses

Our nation looks to Congress to solve problems by producing legislation. Four congressional sessions took place during the eight years of the Obama administration; these were the 111^th (2009-2011), 112^th (2011-2013), 113^th (2013-2015), and 114^th (2015-2017). These four congressional sessions were often labeled and stigmatized as some of the least productive sessions in our nation’s history. This raises the questions, what explains legislative productivity? What variables effect it? Were the four sessions that took place during the Obama administration that ineffective? How do these sessions compare to sessions that took place during past presidential administrations? This …

Trump, Twitter And The Death Of The American Political Party: A Discussion Of The Fate Of The American Party System Before, During, And After The Presidential Election Of 2016, Madeleine Neider

Honors Theses

Abstract: This paper seeks to address the essential question: what happened during the presidential election of 2016 and what does this mean for the American party system? Using qualitative and quantitative analysis, this research suggests that the 2016 election is evidence that domineering policy demanders, such as the Tea Party Movement and Occupy Wall Street, and domineering politicians, such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, used the democratized media to force a top-down realignment of the American party system. A top-down realignment is characterized by the demise of the prominent American political party­– an institution fundamental to our political process. …

Factors Of Political Party Competitiveness In Mississippi, Anna Kate Baygents

Honors Theses

This research project examines the relationship between urbanization and political party competitiveness in Mississippi. Using elections results from the 2011 and the 2015 Mississippi House of Representatives races, this project seeks to find if there is a relationship between urbanization and competitiveness in Mississippi, and if not, which factors do affect competitiveness. Previous research indicates that as an area urbanizes, its elections become more competitive among different political parties. However, this study finds that there is no clear correlation between urbanization and party competitiveness in Mississippi elections, and that other factors, including race, education, and geographic location, may have more …

Allied Paper Landfill, A Case Study Of Superfund, Kaitlin Braunschweig

Honors Theses

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (1980), more commonly known as Superfund, delegates the responsibility for cleanup of more than 1,300 hazardous waste sites to the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This thesis is designed as a case study to investigate the Superfund program through the lens of the Allied Paper Landfill portion of the Kalamazoo River Superfund Site. Through interviews with key stakeholders an evaluation was completed based on the following research questions: 1) are the current goals of Superfund appropriate, 2) is the funding mechanism sufficient to fulfill the goals of Superfund, and 3) is the …

Race Representatives: Why Black Members Of Congress Matter, Shenika Mcdonald

Honors Theses

My research project consisted of examining 200 bills sponsored by six African American members of Congress during the Ninety-third Congress (1973-1975). These six members of Congress represented Chicago, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; or New York, New York- three metropolitan cities with significant African American populations. This research emphasizes the importance of Black members of Congress to African Americans nationwide by highlighting the Congressional Black Caucus' formation and mission, examining the bills' key terms and public policy issues for racial implications, and consulting a variety of secondary source material that underscores the need for descriptive representation in the Black community. The primary …

Campaigning On Youtube: Messaging And Online Communication In The 2016 Presidential Nomination Process, Abraham Krieger

Honors Theses

The Internet has become an important media environment in the context of political campaigns. This research examines YouTube, the most popular website for video content, in order to understand how the platform fits into the broader media landscape and analyzes the messaging content of leading candidates seeking the 2016 nomination. It tests several hypotheses about the YouTube content posted by the campaigns of Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton, during the period from the announcement of their candidacies through February 10, 2016. The research finds that campaigns upload varying amounts and types of content and that they …

“Last Flag Standing”: How Traditional Conservative Values And Symbolic Voting In The State Of Mississippi Help Explain The Defense Of The Confederate Flag By Voters In The 2001 Referendum, Joshua Von Herrmann

Honors Theses

Mississippi is the last state in the United States to publicly display the confederate symbol as part of its state flag. In 2001, when given the chance to remove this symbol from its flag, voters in Mississippi supported this symbol by a vote of 2 to 1. Previous studies have documented the importance of race in the outcome of the 2001 referendum, but lack analysis of other potential influential factors specific to the state of Mississippi. This study examines the issue of the Mississippi state flag through a case study analysis using the ballot initiatives of Amendment 1 in 2004, …

Demographics As Destiny: Modeling Population Change And Party Strategies On The Electoral Map, 2016-2040, Sam Parker

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the ways demographic change will affect presidential elections over the next 25 years. It utilizes a detailed, interactive model to project the electoral effects of demographic growth in every presidential election from 2016 to 2040; the model allows me to simulate how voting rates by demographic groups might be altered by changes in party strategies. The two alternative Republican strategies this model simulates are a "doubling down" on white voters and a "diversified coalition" approach, where Republicans would reach out to minorities to build a coalition better suited to America's growing diversity.

The model's results indicate that, …