American Politics Commons^™

Legislative Civility, Gridlock, Polarization, And Productivity, William D. Schreckhise, John C. Pierce, Francis A. Benjamin, Nicholas P. Lovrich, Eric D. Button

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article examines the relationship between legislative civility and legislative productivity in US state legislatures. The research employs data from the National Survey of State Legislative Lobbyists and from the State Policy Innovation and Diffusion (SPID) database. The former dataset is used to generate an overall civility index for each state as developed by Kettler et al. The SPID database allows one to measure the legislative productivity of a state legislature. Employing these data, negative binomial and Poisson regression models reveal that state legislatures rated as more civil by their own lobbyists produced significantly more pieces of noteworthy legislation than …

Casar Student Debate #3: Can Solidarity Produce Mutual Benefits For The African Diaspora& Palestine Social Movements?, The Prince Alwaleed Center For American Studies And Research Casar

Performances, Events, and Presentations

Every semester, CASAR AUC holds miscellaneous student debates discussing the hot controversial topics in the US, Egypt and from around the world in hopes of raising awareness about these topics & broadening the perspectives of our students as they learn to engage in fruitful discussions as they share different opinion on the topic being deliberated. At this CASAR Student Discussion event #3 in celebration of Black History Month, we watched Nelson Madela speak his mind about the topic in 1990, in which he proclaims solidarity with the Palestinian cause on behalf of the African National Congress. Then we opened the …

What Influences Reproductive Rights Policy? State Abortion Restrictions And The Level Of State Democracy, Dylan C. Naughton

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

The overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 greatly altered the way reproductive rights policy is regulated in the United States. Sole policy-making jurisdiction was given to individual states, and many states have already passed legislation that both expands and restricts abortion access. This research examines what factors have the most influence on state-level abortion policy-making, specifically testing to determine how significant the level of democracy is in deciding how restrictive reproductive rights policies are implemented. Multiple regression models were run using various other variables to examine their impact on state reproduction restriction ranking using multiple subsets of data. Through …

Casar Public Lecture: ‘The Free Speech Exception To Palestine’, The Prince Alwaleed Center For American Studies And Research Casar, Mark W. Deets, Steven Salaita

Performances, Events, and Presentations

CASAR Public Lecture: ‘The Free Speech Exception to Palestine’ - Thurs. 15 Feb - with ECLT Professor Dr. Steven Salaita where we discussed the repression of pro-Palestine speech and action throughout the West and beyond. This was a collaboration between the Prince Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR), School of GAPP and the English & Comparative Literature Department at the School of HUSS, The American University in Cairo. Thursday February 15, 2024 – Tim Sullivan Lounge – AUC New Cairo

Isn’T There A Better Way To Nominate Presidential Candidates?, Elaine Kamarck

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

This lecture examines why every four years the major political parties undertake a drawn-out, confusing series of primaries, caucuses, and conventions to determine their presidential nominees. Over the years, a number of rational and more orderly ways to select presidential nominees have been proposed but none of these ideas have been adopted. Brookings Institution scholar Elaine Kamarck, who has written extensively on the topic and served as a presidential and presidential campaign advisor, addresses these topics and more.

Casar Public Lecture: ‘The U.S. Civil Rights Experience And The Freedom Riders’, The Prince Alwaleed Center For American Studies And Research Casar, Mark W. Deets

Performances, Events, and Presentations

CASAR Public lecture titled: ‘The U.S. Civil Rights Experience and the Freedom Riders’ In celebration of Black History Month, join us in an intriguing discussion about U.S. history with Ms. Joan Trumpauer-Mulholland , an American civil rights activist and one of the Freedom Riders, a group of black and white activists who challenged the legally segregated buses and bus stations of the South by refusing to travel separately. This event was a collaboration between the Public Diplomacy Section at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the Prince Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR), School of GAPP, The American …

Conspiracy Theories And Religion: Christian Nationalism And The Rise Of North American Populism, Carmen Celestini

Consensus

No abstract provided.

Understanding The Lgbtq+ Divide: A Review On The Impact Of Geographic Location And Political Climate On Lgbtq+ Patient Care In The United States., Conner Clark

Cooper Rowan Medical Journal

Background:

In the United States, laws and policies are proposed and passed daily that either protect or restrict transgender patients’ access to care. The objective of this study is to review the existing body of literature on the effect of state-level policy on transgender patients’ overall health.

Methods:

Primary literature was identified through PubMed and the National Institutes of Health. Search terms included keywords related to the following concepts: LGBTQ terms, differentiating terms, regional terms, and health outcome terms. Inclusion criteria: Quantifiable studies conducted on the American LGBTQ and Transgender population from January 2015 to April 2023. Exclusion criteria: Studies …

Divisive Or Descriptive?: How Americans Understand Critical Race Theory, Alauna Safarpour, Kristin Lunz Trujillo, Jon Green, Caroline High Pippert, Jennifer Lin, James N. Druckman

Political Science Faculty Publications

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has become a flashpoint of elite political discord, yet how Americans actually perceive CRT is unclear. We theorize that Republican elites utilized a strong framing strategy to re-define CRT as an “empty signifier” representing broader racial and cultural grievances. Using a survey and a pre-registered experiment among U.S. adults (N = 19,060), we find that this strategy worked. Republicans exhibit more familiarity with CRT and hold more negatively valenced (and wide ranging) sentiments toward CRT, relative to Democrats. Moreover, compared to teaching the legacy of racism in schools, Republicans are significantly more opposed to teaching CRT …

A Constellation Approach To Understanding Extremist White Supremacy, Kathleen Blee, Robert Futrell, Pete Simi

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Reflecting on long-term intensive ethnographic fieldwork, we sketch a “constellation” framework for understanding U.S. extremist white supremacy. Rather than tracing fluctuating people and organizations to explain the persistence of white supremacist extremism, we suggest that focusing on a core set of practices, ideas, and emotions offers a more complex, nuanced, and useful interpretation. We contrast our constellation framework with more typical “bucket” approaches that tend to compartmentalize a complex reality into categories that do not sufficiently match extremism’s dynamism.

Senatus Exesa: Explaining The Abuse Of Procedure In The U.S. Congress, Ian Klenk

Soaring: A Journal of Undergraduate Research

Senatus Exesa: Explaining the Abuse of Procedure in the U.S. Congress

Abstract

On October 3^rd, 2023, Rep. Kevin McCarthy became the first Speaker of the House of Representatives to be forcibly removed from his position as Speaker of the lower chamber of Congress. Though dramatic, this episode is indicative of the current state of American politics. At a time when political polarization between the two parties has never been higher, norms that were once considered the nuclear option are now understood as the norm. Cynicism and distrust of Congress is at an all-time high, with many Americans disabused …

The Effects Of Empathic Reactions To The Overturning Of Roe V. Wade On Campaign Participation And Voter Turnout: Evidence From The 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections, Cigdem Sirin, José Villalobos

Selected Works Temporary Series

In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade, reversing the nearly 50-year-old landmark decision that affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. Several months later, voters turned out in record numbers for the 2022 midterms, though a widely predicted “Red Wave” vote did not materialize. There has since been speculation that overturning Roe v. Wade played a crucial role in the midterms, generating a “Blue Tsunami” or “Roevember” driven largely by young, pro-choice women voting out of self-interest. We posit instead that group empathy was the key motivational mechanism in the link between opposition to …

Did The Change In Snap Ebt Benefits In Response To Covid-19 Affect Poverty, Snap Participation, And Food Insecurity Rates?, Paige Thing

2024 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is one of the most important welfare programs the United States government offers. In fiscal year 2015, one in every seven Americans received SNAP assistance. Previously called food stamps as they were first introduced with the passing of the Food and Agriculture Act in 1977, this program has been helping individuals struggling with food insecurity for decades (Ziliak 2016). Benefits are no longer dispersed with physical stamps, restricting what households can and cannot buy. Now benefits are distributed via a debit card-type system. This is where the EBT gets added to the program …

The Effects Of Empathic Reactions To The Overturning Of Roe V. Wade On Campaign Participation And Voter Turnout: Evidence From The 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections, Cigdem Sirin, José Villalobos

Departmental Papers (PS)

In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade, reversing the nearly 50-year-old landmark decision that affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. Several months later, voters turned out in record numbers for the 2022 midterms, though a widely predicted “Red Wave” vote did not materialize. There has since been speculation that overturning Roe v. Wade played a crucial role in the midterms, generating a “Blue Tsunami” or “Roevember” driven largely by young, pro-choice women voting out of self-interest. We posit instead that group empathy was the key motivational mechanism in the link between opposition …

The Voice Of Reason: The Rhetoric Of Women Politicians In A Polarized U.S. Congress, Ingrid Ryan

Honors Program Theses

Political rhetoric can be utilized as a divisive tactic in the modern polarized age to separate the Democratic and Republican public in U.S. congressional speeches. Once holding an educational purpose in the 1980s, U.S. House representatives and senators now must focus on their political party’s issue goals to ensure their re-election. This research investigates common political rhetoric tools – while evaluating women politicians’ speeches about abortion, the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, and Donald Trump’s two impeachments – to find if they encourage partisan polarization or anti-democratic behavior. This research focuses on these speeches from U.S. House Representatives Ilhan Omar and …

I'Ve Registered To Vote... Now What?, Gabriel Giberson, Jasmine Cintron Soto, Lauren Shelton, Hayley Piazza

Student Zines

This zine was created by students from the Center for Community Action and Research to support voter outreach during the 2024 presidential election.

Government Corruption In The Northern Triangle Of Central America As A Major Factor In The Immigration Crisis In The United States, Kenia Karina Rodriguez Turcios

Honors Program Theses and Research Projects

Immigration trends to the United States from Central America are often blamed on violence and insecurity created by cartels and street gangs. However, corruption in the government system in Central America is an understudied factor that might influence immigration from the region. This article adds to the literature on immigration by proposing that government corruption in the Northern Triangle is an important “push” factor which leads individuals to emigrate to the United States. Incorporating the role of corruption in our understanding of why we see large numbers of individuals fleeing their home countries to enter the United States provides us …

What Removal Causes Are Most Common For Children In Foster Care? Are There Discrepancies Across Age Groups?, Elise Woodliff

Social Work Theses - Archive

Although there has been recent focus on child welfare to prevent removals, little literature has examined reasons children are removed among diverse developmental stages. The present study explores the multifaceted demographics of children in the foster care system in order to recognize who is being affected by what removal causes. The purpose of this study is to better understand the foster care system to target interventions and screenings for children under eighteen years of age in the United States. Quantitative measures were used to analyze statistics that were made available through the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System. …

Boiling Behind Bars: Exploring The Hidden Toll Of Extreme Heat On Mental Health In Texas Prisons, Sandra K. Miller

Social Work Theses - Archive

The State of Texas supports the largest prison system in the US and held 132,859 people in 100 units scattered across the state as of December 2023. Approximately 70% of Texas prison beds are not air conditioned, despite the state’s reputation for dangerously hot, humid summers. The State has officially recorded temperatures inside Texas prison facilities as high as 120 degrees with heat index values of over 150. Although there is a growing body of research on the negative physiological and psychological consequences of extreme heat among the general public, little is known about the physical and emotional toll of …

Bureaucratic Autonomy And The Policymaking Capacity Of United States Agencies, 1998-2021, Nicholas Bednar

Articles

Despite a renewed interest in the health of the US administrative state, the absence of meaningful time-series measures of bureaucratic capacity hinders the testing of core theories of bureaucratic and executive politics. Using over 190 million personnel records, I estimate 5590 yearly policymaking-capacity scores for 261 unique agencies from 1998 to 2021. These measures provide an invaluable tool as either an independent or dependent variable in studies of administrative policymaking. To illustrate the value of these measures, I test longstanding theories about the relationship between bureaucratic autonomy and capacity. In contrast with emerging survey research, this study demonstrates that agencies …

Presidential Investment In The Administrative State, Nicholas Bednar, David E. Lewis

Articles

In this paper, we explain how presidents strategically invest in administrative capacity, noting that presidents have few incentives to invest effort in capacity building in most agencies. We test our account with two analyses. First, we examine the time it took for the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations to nominate individuals to appointed positions. We find that presidents prioritize appointments to policy over management positions and that nominations occur sooner in agencies that implement presidential priorities. Second, we examine the responses of federal executives to the 2020 Survey on the Future of Government Service to see whether perceptions of …

“Because I Said So”: How National Leaders Use Rhetoric To Frame The Issues Of National Security And The War On Drugs, Saul Valle

History and Political Science | Senior Theses

In the preamble of the 2024 presidential election seasons in both the United States and Mexico, there has been an increase in aggressive outspoken expression by national leaders regarding how to best handle the issue of drugs and drug use across the Western hemisphere. These types of sweeping policies are often credited to President Richard Nixon, who on June 18th, 1971, initiated his “War on Drugs,” a global policy campaign intended to address the production, distribution, and consumption of the illicit drug trade. Existing scholarship on this topic has extensively analyzed the early years of the American war on drugs …

“We’Ll Offer Asylum Just So Long As…” The Discrimination Of Poc And Lgbtq+ Refugees In Ongoing Refugee Crises, Faith N. Schaefer

Undergraduate Honors Theses

An ongoing refugee crisis is apparent in global politics and foreign relations. Still, the way receiving countries regard certain communities in this critical period has brought to light the inhumane discrimination solely based on one’s skin color and/or sexual identity. Despite the “open arms” policy that most nations tend to project, there is an unwritten protocol along borders that some states have chosen a “pick and choose” approach when it comes to People of Color (POC) and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and other gender non-conforming (LGBTQ+) individuals who are fleeing their country of origin. Any such prejudice and inequity …

Identifying Youth Appeals In Alcohol Alternative Social Media Content Through Framing, Melina Oneal

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Proposed regulations for alcohol advertising prevent beverage companies from targeting people under the legal drinking age. However, similar regulations for alcohol alternative beverages are less explored, which could allow alcohol alternative products to create awareness for alcoholic beverages among youth. Alcohol alternatives beverages, including no-alcohol and low-alcohol products, are increasing in popularity and can function as compliments to alcoholic products to decrease the total alcohol volume consumed or as substitutes for alcoholic products. Framing theory can be operationalized through the Content Appealing to Youth Index, an index of content elements found in research literature to be appealing to youth, to …

Why Do We Vote?: An Analytical And Data-Centered Approach To The Impact Of Infrastructure Quality On Voter Turnout In Virginia Counties, Alex F. Broening

Araneum: Richmond Journal of American & Global Affairs

Everyday political discourse centers around the direction of voting far more than the choice to vote itself, despite low turnout rates in the United States overall, and especially in local and non-presidential elections. No existing model provides a complete explanation of the reasons and influences that cause individuals to participate in politics by casting a ballot, and the literature is especially fractured with regards to issue-specific activation of voters. This work expands on previous issue-focused studies by performing turnout analyses for Virginia counties alongside geographic analysis of infrastructure quality and access. The findings suggest that the quality of infrastructure has …

Not In My Zoning Code: Understanding The Mechanisms Of Policy Diffusion Of Deregulatory Zoning Reform Across U.S. Cities, Fiona F. Nash

Honors Theses

Do we need local government? Cities maintain representative institutions of government, hold elections, and host public hearings, but does that mean they can tackle city-specific problems? This project seeks to understand how deregulatory zoning policies, a supply-side tool to increase housing supply of affordable homes, spread across the 300 largest U.S. cities, or not. Cities might implement a zoning reform because they learn from another city, desire to increase housing supply for economic conditions, imitate another city, are forced too by a higher level of government, or are ideologically motivated to do so. I test each hypothesis of diffusion through …

Renewing Study Into The Oldest Hatred: Introduction To The Law Vs. Antisemitism Symposium, David Schraub

Lewis & Clark Law Review

This short essay provides an introduction to the Lewis & Clark Law Review's "Law vs. Antisemitism" symposium, which grew out of the conference by the same name hosted at Lewis & Clark in the spring of 2023. In addition to overviewing the contributions to the symposium, the introduction provides some background on the relative paucity of legal scholarship that has addressed antisemitism, and the importance of including antisemitism in the otherwise robust legal academic conversation occurring around other forms of oppression and social discrimination.

Politicizing Antisemitism Amidst Today’S Educational Culture Wars, Lili Levi

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The traditional narrative of American Jewry emphasizes American exceptionalism with respect to antisemitism. But there have been clear signs of a resurgence of public antisemitism in the United States even before the massive rise in antisemitic expression and incidents associated with the Israel-Hamas war of fall 2023.

One of the notable aspects of the rise and normalization of antisemitic expression is the deployment of antisemitism as a political tool. For example, in addition to Democrats and Republicans accusing each other of complicity in antisemitism, both federal policy since the Trump era and state antiantisemitism legislation have targeted campus antisemitism in …

Racial Capitalism, The Precariat, And Us Immigration: Past And Present, Lily Dunkin

Scripps Senior Theses

Combining the lens of the political economic theories of Racial Capitalism and the Precariat, and applying them to a historical analysis of the US immigration system and its modern implications in US States, we are better able to understand to manner in which the immigration regime works to provide a cheap, exploitable labor force for US industry elites. By establishing and fortifying pre-existing racial hierarchies within the US while also utilizing the precariat’s philosophies on flexible labor and a lack of economic security, elites are able to weaponize the fear instilled by the US Immigration system and leverage their bottom …

Political Parties, Elections, And Interest Groups, H. Ege Ozen

Open Educational Resources

The role and significance of political parties and interest groups in the U.S. political process; the development, organization functions, the finances of U.S. political parties; campaigning and voting behavior, and the goals and techniques of the major formal and informal pressure groups that influence public policy in the United States. This class will have a special focus on 2024 national elections in the United States.