American Politics Commons^™

An Examination Of Nebraska’S Law Setting The Age Of Majority At Nineteen, Lauren Mcneal

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

My proposed research covers the actions of the Nebraska legislature surrounding the age of majority. During the summer of 2019, I interned with Senator Adam Morfeld to draft a bill lowering the age of majority in Nebraska from nineteen to eighteen for healthcare services. Many eighteen-year-olds, especially students, face complications when they seek healthcare services but need parental consent. This is because young adults tend to move away from their homes at this age but are still not considered independent from their parents under Nebraska state law. In this thesis, I use the information I gathered from my interim research …

Stewart, John George, 1890-1970 (Sc 3509), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3509. Letter, 21 September 1965, from John George Stewart, Architect of the U.S. Capitol, to U.S. Congressman William H. Natcher certifying that the accompanying flag had flown over the U.S. Capitol. The flag was for the Bowling Green, Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.

President Trump’S First Term: The Year In C-Span Archives Research, Volume 5, Robert X. Browning

The Year in C-SPAN Archives Research

C-SPAN is the network of record for US political affairs, broadcasting live gavel-to-gavel proceedings of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and to other forums where public policy is discussed, debated, and decided––without editing, commentary, or analysis and with a balanced presentation of points of view.

The C-SPAN Archives, located adjacent to Purdue University, is the home of the online C-SPAN Video Library. The Archives has copied all of C-SPAN's television content since 1987. Extensive indexing, captioning, and other enhanced online features provide researchers, policy analysts, students, teachers, and public officials with an unparalleled chronological and internally cross-referenced record …

A Thin Line Between Sovereign And Abject Agents: Global Action Thrillers With The Sci-Fi Mind-Game War On Terror, Seung-Hoon Jeong

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Seung-hoon Jeong discusses in his paper global action thrillers about the war on terror. He highlights the biopolitical abjection of counterterrorist agents from their state agencies. This abjection ends up either self-reaffirming in the manner of a sovereign agent (the Bond series) or terrorizing their sovereign system (the Bourne series), while both are trapped in the vicious cycle of terror and counterterror. More notable is the “mind-game” sci-fi genre. Source Code, among others, stages a loop of a traumatic counterterrorist mission with retroactive causality, a closed circuit of neoliberal productivity and pathological abjection in a video-game narrative. The time-travel …

Do We Intend To Keep Our Republic?, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] Commentators recently have reminded us of a famous statement Benjamin Franklin allegedly made upon exiting Independence Hall on the final day of the 1787 Constitutional Convention. When asked whether the proposed Constitution would establish a monarchy or a republic, Franklin supposedly answered: "A republic, if you can keep it."

The anecdote, which both inspired the title of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch's recent book and was recounted by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi when she announced the impeachment inquiry into the conduct of the president, reminds us that our republican form of government is not to be taken …

Silver Bow Creek: Good News But More Questions, Evan Barrett, Mick Ringsak

Highlands College

Editorial which appeared in the following newspaper:

The Montana Standard, February 3, 2020

The U.S. Approach To Peacebuilding In Afghanistan: A Comparative Analysis Of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, And Donald Trump Administration Policies In Afghanistan, Mohammad Rasouli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research paper addresses the efforts of the U.S. to achieve some level of reconciliation with the Taliban after more than 18 years of war in Afghanistan. It deals with the history of U.S.-Taliban negotiations and the U.S. initiatives to engage with the Taliban, as well as outlining the challenges to these initiatives and determining how effective they have been. In addition, the prospects of the U.S.-Taliban peace talks are assessed.

Since the 2001 U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, the first two U.S. administrations under consideration—those of George W. Bush and Barack Obama—justified intrusive interventions into the political, economic, and social …

Whose War Is It Anyway? How Afghanistan Became A Battlefield Over Global Hegemony During The Cold War, Kathryn Shapiro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Traditional scholarship depicts the Cold War, which began immediately after World War Two and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, as a battle of freedom and democracy over communism and authoritarian control. Cold War propaganda cartoons often show an Uncle Sam figure facing off against the Soviet Union, or a Soviet Bear reaching out to grab and control Western Europe. While this may have been popular Cold War discourse, a close look at internal documents from the United States Government at the time reveals that the United States was more interested in protecting resources and their …

"Great Variety Of Relevant Conditions, Political Social And Economic": The Constitutionality Of Congressional Deadlines On Amendment Proposals Under Article V, Danaya C. Wright

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Within a year or two, the thirty-eighth state is likely to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), setting up an unprecedented constitutional challenge. The ERA was proposed with a seven-year deadline in the resolving clause, establishing the mode of ratification. That was a shift from earlier precedents in which a deadline had been placed in the text of the amendment proposal itself. Article V is annoyingly silent on the issue of congressional deadlines in amendment proposals, and the Supreme Court has never addressed the issue of a deadline that could void an otherwise properly ratified amendment. The practice of placing …

Not So Exceptional: Race And The American Ancient Regime, Albert Leon Samuels

Department of Political Science and Geography Faculty Publications

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election stunned the political establishment as well as much of the academy, provoking scholars to search for answers to explain this unexpected result. His win is particularly striking considering that he is the antithesis of his successor, Barack Obama. As the nation’s first African American president, Obama embodies the triumph of the idea that “American exceptionalism” and commitment to the nation’s first principles can overcome America’s tragic history with respect to race. American exceptionalism premises itself on the idea that the United States, unlike Europe, lacks an “ancient regime” based on class hierarchy …

We Need A Loud And Fractious Poor, Jeff Maskovsky, Frances Fox Piven

Publications and Research

This article explores the political consequences of four decades of consistent humiliation of the poor by the most authoritative voices in the land, and offers insights into ways that new movements are creating spaces for poor people’s political voices to surface and become relevant again. Our specific concern is the challenge that the current humiliation regime poses to those who seek to revive radical, disruptive and fractious anti-poverty activism and politics. By humiliation regime, we mean a form of political violence that maltreats those classified popularly and politically as “the poor” by treating them as undeserving of citizenship, rights, public …

The Congressional Review Act (Cra): Frequently Asked Questions, United States Congressional Research Service

United States House of Representatives: Documents

Summary

The Congressional Review Act (CRA) is an oversight tool that Congress may use to overturn rules issued by federal agencies. The CRA was included as part of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA), which was signed into law on March 29, 1996. The CRA requires agencies to report on their rulemaking activities to Congress and provides Congress with a special set of procedures under which to consider legislation to overturn those rules.

Under the CRA, before a rule can take effect, an agency must submit a report to each house of Congress and the comptroller general containing …

B613?, Donna Roberts

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

Comment from IBPP Editor: Psychological research traditions relevant to this article include (1) magical thinking not as schizotypal indicator but as normative phenomenon, (2) the developmental sequence of primary omniscience followed by the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions of Kleinian psychoanalysis, and (3) collective psychologies including the Jungian collective unconscious as exploitable by charismatic political leaders.

Author's abstract: Hollywood will always be Hollywood. There will always be ridiculous chase scenes, impossible rescues and implausible conspiracies, each accompanied by the proverbial warning, “Don’t try this at home.” But sometimes, when art seems to imitate life and aspects of the fantasy world on …

Trump’S False ‘Realism’, Muhammad Ali Baig, Syed Sabir Muhammad

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

Comment from IBPP Editor: One key challenge implicit in this article compromises interactions among formal political science definitions of realism and psychological constructions of realism, materialism, objectivism/subjectivism, empiricism, and idealism.

Authors' Abstract: Foreign policy pivoted upon realist principles has have remained a vital instrument to pursue, achieve, secure and sustain the policy objectives of a state. America being the liberal hegemonic state maintained ‘liberal hegemony’ since the end of the Second World War. Realists intended to adopt a realist foreign policy; however, ideologies like ‘American Exceptionalism’ dominated over the former. President Donald Trump opted for protectionism with the objective of …

Congressional Committee Resources On Space Policy During The 115th Congress (2017-2018): Providing Context And Insight Into U.S. Government Space Policy, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Article 1 of the US Constitution assigns the US Congress numerous responsibilities. These include creating new laws, revising existing laws, funding government programs, and conducting oversight of these programs' performance. Oversight of US Government agency space policy programs is executed by various congressional space policy committees, including the House and Senate Science Committees, Armed Services, and Appropriations Committees. These committees conduct many public hearings on space policy which invite witnesses to testify on US space policy programs and feature debate on the strengths and weaknesses of these programs. Documentation produced by these committees is widely available to the public, except …

Institute For Public Policy National Poll - January 2020, Institute For Public Policy

Public Policy Poll Results

The Sacred Heart University Institute for Public Policy leveraged a dual-methodology quantitative research approach to address the following areas of investigation:

• Thoughts on the quality of life in Connecticut
• Governor Ned Lamont’s job approval ratings
• Awareness of Lamont’s new transportation proposal
• Opinions toward the implementation of a truck-only tolling system
• Perceptions of utility prices in Connecticut
• Opinions regarding an Economic Development Charge
• Perceptions of the strength of Connecticut’s economy
• Awareness of and opinions with impeachment hearings
• Ranking of 2020 Presidential election candidates
• Demographic profiles of respondents

Citizen-Consumers Wanted: Revitalizing The American Dream In The Face Of Economic Recessions, 1981-2012, Gokcen Coskuner-Balli

Business Faculty Articles and Research

This article brings sociological theory of governmentality to bear on a longitudinal analysis of American presidential speeches to theorize the formation of the citizen-consumer subject. The 40-year historical analysis which expands through four economic recessions and the presidential terms of Ronald Reagan, William J. Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Hussein Obama, illustrates the ways in which the national mythology of American Dream myth has been linked to the political ideology of the state to create the citizen-consumer subject in the United States. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data demonstrates first, the consistent emphasis on responsibility as a …

Teacher Unrest In West Virginia, 2018-2019, Lindsey D. Reed

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

In 2018, the United States saw an influx of teacher strikes which were largely propagated by red-state legislation. Then and now, teachers are trying to gain a voice in educational legislation despite corporate and political strongholds on legislators. As a last measure to gain access to the policymaking process, teachers strike. When teachers strike, it becomes a social issue which puts pressure on families, the economy, and legislation. The purpose of this non-experimental, descriptive study was to examine the perceptions of teachers who participated in the 2018 and 2019 West Virginia teachers’ strikes as they relate to their interactions with …

The Party Decides, Or Does It?: An In-Depth Analysis Of The 2020 Presidential Primaries And The Democratic Party's Influence, Emma Trittin

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This paper explores the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primaries through the lens of Marty Cohen's The Party Decides model. The model utilizes five key indicators in helping to predict who the party will decide as the nominee: widespread voter approval, key endorsements, fundraising, media coverage, and success in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. While the model has been an indicator for almost 50 years, two of the five recent primaries have shown that the candidates are the exception to the rule. This paper will either prove whether or not the exception becomes the rule, if the rule is no …

U.S. Democratization In Post-Cold War Russia: A Critique, Franklin T. Hughes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

States are path dependent entities that deviate solely in the face of catastrophic failures in the pursuit of axiomatic ends by conventional means. The inertia of bureaucratic institutions, a foreign policy consensus within a self-reproducing elite of experts, the self-interest of political elites and a sense of “national self” or identity lead states to understand themselves in light of a history and a relative level of status on the world stage. Since the end World War II, the U.S. has a certain path that places the spread of democracy and laissez-faire capitalism extremely important if not vital foreign policy goals. …

Clearing The Field: How Do Presidential Primary Candidates Win Big On Super Tuesday?, Colin D. Swearingen

2020 Faculty Bibliography

In presidential primaries, Super Tuesday elections play a significant role in winnowing candidate fields and establishing nomination frontrunners. Despite their importance, scholars know little about why and how candidates win or lose the states comprising these events. This study explores which factors help explain candidate performance in Super Tuesday primaries between 2008 and 2016. Using pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis, the results indicate three key drivers of Super Tuesday success: candidate viability, public attention, and media attention. These findings imply that presidential campaigns continue to be complex electoral events beyond the early primary states and suggest that underdog candidates can still …

Untitled, Michayla George

Debate Essay Winners

2nd Place Winner - High School Division

Michayla George

Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet High School

Geographic And Partisan Patterns Of Support For Electoral Reforms, Aubrey Kelley

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Electoral reform has become a hotly debated issue, and it has recently been in the news at federal and state levels. On the federal level, the House of Representatives recently passed an electoral reform bill to expand early voting and allow for same-day voter registration. On the state level, Kentucky has become one of the most recent states to implement photo identification requirements. Georgia’s strict voter registration system became a subject of deep controversy during the most recent gubernatorial election. Throughout the past couple of decades, electoral reform has been tackled in a variety of different ways; some states have …

Factors Contributing To Continuing Democratic Victories In Some Southern House Districts, 1994–2008, Dillon Mccormick

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The American South went through a period of political transition in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This transition reached its climax after the 1994 elections, after which Democrats ceased to hold the majority of House seats in the South, never to regain that strength. However, Democrats continued to win a decent share of House seats in the South after 1994, with about 40% of Southern House seats being won by Democrats until the 2010 elections, after which Democrats shrunk to a much smaller minority.

This paper analyzes the factors that allowed some Democrats to continue to be elected …

"Family Values Don't Stop At The Rio Grande..." : Can The Republican Party Convert Hispanic Voters?, Donald Davison

Faculty Publications

As the Hispanic community becomes increasingly important in American politics there are competing views about whether they can be converted to the Republican Party. One perspective argues that Hispanics’ religion and traditional social values makes them natural constituents of the Republican Party. Alternatively, Hispanics are primarily concerned about issues promoting their well-being, while topics such as moral values or religion are private. I use a novel approach to test whether traditional social values might attract Hispanic voters to the Republican Party. Using exit poll results for ballot propositions on moral issues from Arizona, Colorado, and Florida I find weak evidence …

Untitled, Atticus Mosser

Debate Essay Winners

3rd Place Winner - Middle School Division

Atticus Mosser

West End Middle School

In Opposition Of The Electoral College, Sadia Bolduc

Debate Essay Winners

3rd Place Winner - High School Division

Saida Bolduc

Martin Luther King, Jr. Magnet High School

Samuel Huntington's Clash Of Civilizations And Its Allure For The Past Thirty Years, Michaela Munda

Departmental Honors Projects

Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington wrote, taught, and advised on United States defense and foreign policy for over fifty years. The 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, is by far the most prominent of Huntington’s works. Though the work pertained to the world order following the collapse of the Soviet Union, his urging to understand factors that would set up the next stages of world conflict seem to hold truth throughout the last thirty years, and even in the present. Huntington argues that culture and identity will be at the forefront of global conflict. …

How News Media Coverage Of Crises Promotes Conspiracy Beliefs, Richard L Kornrumpf

Undergraduate Arts and Research Showcase

While scholars of conspiracy theories have recently made great strides in understanding the basic nature and correlates of conspiratorial thinking, we still know little about how conspiracy beliefs are disseminated and communicated, especially when it comes to traditional media. Here we use a unique experiment to investigate whether media coverage of mass shootings – complete with the uncertainty, conflicting reports, and dubious official narratives that characterize such coverage – provides the raw material for conspiracy theories and promotes conspiracy beliefs among viewers. We find that implicit conspiratorial information – that which causes confusion and foments uncertainty – does not enflame …

A State Divided: The Reality Of Education In Maine, Gabrielle Raymond

Honors Program Theses

In Maine there is a lack of a comprehensive policy that allows and facilitates an equal education for all students no matter where they go to school. In order to research what is driving this inequality a specific policy was selected to use as the case study. The policy selected was proficiency-based learning. This policy was enacted in 2012 which makes it the most recent comprehensive education policy passed in Maine. In addition, this policy mandated similar concepts as past policy, so it was able to illustrate the trends in Maine’s education policy. In order to understand what effects education …