American Politics Commons^™

A New Balance: National Security And Privacy In A Post 9-11 World, Russell B. Wilson

Honors Theses

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 shocked the American security apparatus, placing greater pressure on the security actions of the U.S. government, particularly regarding information gathering. Laying out a framework that examines different notions of national security and privacy, this paper examine three case studies to illustrate the role of the government and the inherent friction between privacy and security that increased information gathering inherently creates. The shifting balance between the two variables forces us to reexamine how we want our government to protect us and what we will sacrifice in order to ensure our own well being. With …

Arab Authoritarianism And Us Foreign Policy, Ki Chun Luk

Bachelor of Social Sciences – Senior Theses

This qualitative research aims to examine the nature and reasons for America support for Arab authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and to provide further details by examining the inferiority of liberal cultures and superiority of realist approach and continuation/discontinuation of this existing approach after/during the Arab Spring by case studies. In order to have a systematic analysis, alternative theoretical models, including a revised national interest model, the neoclassical realist US grand strategy model (Dueck ,2008),the international conditions analysis by Petras (2011),and US domestic politics model will be examined. Currently, the issue under study suffers from little systematic …

The State Of The Parties (Seventh Edition), John C. Green, Daniel J. Coffey, David B. Cohen

The State of the Parties Seventh Edition

Continuing a three-decade tradition, The State of the Parties 7th edition brings together leading experts to evaluate change and continuity in American electoral politics. Political parties in America have never been more contentious and divided than they are right now. Even splits within the parties themselves have the power to elevate relatively unknown candidates to power and topple established incumbents. With sections devoted to polarization and the electorate, polarization and political elites, tea party politics, super PACS, and partisan resources and partisan activities, the contributors survey the American political landscape. They pay special attention to polarization between and within the …

Suburban Sustainability: Favorable, Forgotten, Or Fantasy?, Tessia Melvin, Tessia G. Melvin

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

In the decades after World War II, the United States became a prosperous nation and world superpower. Reinventing itself through the development of suburbs, many communities were created by suburbs. Years later, criticized for suburban sprawl and aging communities, suburban communities today are faced with the dilemma of what changes to make in order to create sustainable suburban communities.

Most of the literature on sustainability and its success comes from the private sector. Much available literature provides sustainable indicators and concepts on corporate sustainability. As a result, many public administrators are faced with a reality that changes need to occur …

Structural Limits Of Liberal Neutrality: Understanding Problems For Sustainabiity, Madison R. Williams

Scripps Senior Theses

Liberalism is a political philosophy that is “committed in the strongest possible way to individual rights, and, almost as a deduction from this, to a rigorously neutral state” (Walzer 99). It takes its “constitutive morality” to be a “theory of equality that requires official neutrality amongst theories of what is valuable in life” (Dworkin 203). For this reason, some theorists say Liberalism and the idea of environmental sustainability are not in conflict with one another. According to Mike Mills, because the commitment to neutrality means there is “no given set of policies associated” with Liberalism, any outcome is plausible (168). …

Supranational Organizations And Legitimacy: How The 2008 Global Economic Crisis Has Affected Public Opinion On Membership In The Eu, Briana Vargas-Gonzalez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines public opinion towards membership in the EU, before and after the 2008 global economic crisis, in the newest member states to join the institution in 2004 (the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia) and 2007 (Bulgaria and Romania). Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989, socialist economies and communism maintained a citizenry that never experienced unemployment and that did not have a political voice. Because free-market economic policies and democratic values are new to these countries, public opinion regarding membership in a supranational organization that promotes and fosters …

Tea Time: A Comparative Analysis Of The Tea Party Caucus And House Republican Conference In The One Hundred Twelfth Congress, Stephen Phillips

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Following the historic election of Barack Obama, the largest overhaul of the nation's health care system since the Great Society, and with the country still reeling from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, a group of disenchanted conservative Republicans and elected leaders wary of government policy gave rise to a new political movement - the Tea Party. Since taking the American political system by storm in 2010, considerable research has focused on the electoral consequences of the Tea Party. Using an original dataset and the American National Election Study, I study the Tea Party Caucus at the elite …

The Long-Term Impact Of Educational And Health Spending On Unemployment Rates, Zafer Pirim, William A. Owings, Leslie S. Kaplan

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

This study used panel data regression analysis to evaluate the long-term effects of several measures of U.S. education expenditure on unemployment rates in 50 states and Washington D.C. over 25 years. The data included state-level statistics for fiscal effort, graduation rates, education spending per pupil, gross state product per capita, welfare spending, health spending, political party affiliation, union versus nonunion states, and unemployment rates. Results find that the best way to effectively reduce unemployment is investment in improving the quality of human capital through funding education. Findings specifically conclude that over the long term, investment in human capital through education …

A Style Of His Own: A Rhetorical Analysis Of President Barack Obama's Inaugural Addresses, Victoria West

Undergraduate Research Awards

This paper analyzes President Obama’s rhetoric in his two inaugural addresses in order to determine how his presidential rhetoric conforms and violates current rhetorical traditions in inaugural addresses. For this paper a rhetorical analysis of Obama’s addresses was performed using a form of genre criticism. The components for this genre criticism were drawn from Vanessa B. Beasley’s work on presidential rhetoric in her book You, the People: American National Identity in Presidential Rhetoric. Results of this analysis will showed that President Obama’s presidential rhetoric is more secular than previous presidents and focuses more on shared American ideals. The results …

Advice Or Consent: The U. S. Senate's Role In Confirming Supreme Court Nominees And The Robert H. Bork Confirmation Hearing, Marjory O'Leary

Undergraduate Research Awards

Examines the supposed partisanship that characterized the U.S. Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork. The author's entry essay for the 2014 Undergraduate Research Awards is included.

Environmental Regulation, Michelle C. Pautz

Political Science Faculty Publications

The terms environment and regulation are commonplace in political and policy debates about the natural environment, the role of science, and the behavior of government. Indeed, these terms reference a very contentious area of public policy and are emblematic of the growing tensions between science and politics. This chapter overviews the definition, types, and history of environmental regulation before turning to the intersection of science and politics in environmental policy and considering current and future challenges for this aspect of governmental activity.

Clinton Connected: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Portrayals Of Hillary Clinton On Online News Blogs During The 2008 Presidential Primaries, Jessica Gonchar

Scripps Senior Theses

Hillary Clinton faced gendered discrimination by news media sources during her presidential campaign in 2008. However, there is almost no research concerning the ways Clinton was portrayed on political blogs. Because blogs typically attract consumers who have similar ideologies, this paper explores if Clinton faced more gender bias on conservative blogs than liberal blogs, utilizing two well-established political blogs. Specifically it looks at three biases that exist in traditional sources of news media: appearance-based discrimination, an emphasis on domesticity, and analyses of femininity. This paper found that, in general, bloggers on a conservative website presented more instances of gender bias …

Rationalizing Voter Suppression: How North Carolina Justified The Nation's Strictest Voting Law, Megan C. Raymond

Scripps Senior Theses

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in instances of Republican-dominated state legislatures proposing changes to election law that some see as protecting electoral integrity and others understand as intended to suppress votes of traditionally Democratic constituencies. This thesis is a detailed collection of the rationales used to justify these changes, as examined through a case study of North Carolina’s enactment of the omnibus Voter Information Verification Act of 2013 (VIVA). By also including the arguments proffered during the legislative process by opponents of the law, and after evaluating the merits of the arguments on both sides, I …

Sex, Slaves, And Saviors: Domestic And Global Agendas In U.S. Anti-Trafficking Policy, Chelsea L. Thompson

Scripps Senior Theses

In this thesis, I problematize the United States’ response to the global phenomenon characterized as human trafficking. The framing of trafficking as policy issue takes place in the context of politicized claims about the nature and prevalence of trafficking, its relation to the sex industry, and the kind of response that is required. U.S. anti-trafficking policy was built and shaped in the context of fears about immigration, global labor, and the sex industry. As a result, trafficking has been used to justify oppressive domestic reactions such as border crackdown, scrutiny of immigrant and sex worker communities, and victim “protection” that …

A Hope That’S Not So Hollow: How The Supreme Court’S Decisions In Windsor And Perry Alter The Political Environment In Which Marriage Equality Activism Operates, Emma Brillhart

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis looks at the state of marriage equality activism in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 26, 2013 decisions in United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry. Some scholars, such as Gerald Rosenberg, argue that Supreme Court decisions can never affect “significant social change,” either directly or indirectly, while others argue that such decisions can be hugely important in directly affecting policy. My focus is on how activist organizations, which have a substantial track record of directly affecting policy, are influenced by changes to the political environment stemming from major Court decisions regarding social issues. After …

"Sea Water Fish In A Freshwater Pond:" An Institutional Approach To Understanding Cooperative Scarcity In The United States, Caroline E. Malone

Scripps Senior Theses

There is remarkable cooperative organization scarcity in the United States. Particularly in the credit union and worker cooperative sectors, this scarcity is not satisfactorily explained by neo-classical economic models that assume competitive conditions and profit-maximizing organizations. This paper supplements the conventional economic understandings of credit union and worker cooperative scarcity with an institutional analysis. Mechanisms of coercive, mimetic, and normative institutional isomorphism developed in DiMaggio and Powell’s theory of organizational isomorphism are applied to provide greater understanding of credit union and worker cooperative scarcity in the US. It appears that these forces of isomorphism work in conjunction with one another, …

Shifting The Ultimatum: Political Alienation And Participation, Grace Cale

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

Common knowledge dictates that cynicism and mistrust of politics is rampant among US citizens, wreaking havoc on participation in the American political process. Social Capital theories are commonly used to effectively explain US political behavior, but fail to account for alienation from the political process or the influence of peers. I argue that models of political participation would be improved by the inclusion of political alienation variables, which have fallen into disuse in recent decades. Using data from the US Citizenship, Involvement, and Democracy Survey (2006), this paper relies upon negative binomial regression with nested models to compare the explanatory …

Beyond Vox Pop: The Role Of News Sourcing And Political Beliefs In Exemplification Effects, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The people we see in news media can affect our perceptions of public opinion through exemplification. Although research shows that individuals interviewed in a news story can influence perceptions of public opinion, little attention has been paid to the role that source type and audience attitudes play in the exemplification process. This study tests how the exemplification process is influenced by different types of news sources featured in an article (e.g., vox pop, protester, and interest group interviews) and the audience’s own political ideology. The study finds that the perceived typicality of sources is affected by both source type and …

American Military Strategy In The Vietnam War, 1965– 1973, Gregory A. Daddis

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

For nearly a decade, American combat soldiers fought in South Vietnam to help sustain an independent, noncommunist nation in Southeast Asia. After U.S. troops departed in 1973, the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975 prompted a lasting search to explain the United States’ first lost war. Historians of the conflict and participants alike have since critiqued the ways in which civilian policymakers and uniformed leaders applied—some argued misapplied—military power that led to such an undesirable political outcome. While some claimed U.S. politicians failed to commit their nation’s full military might to a limited war, others contended that most officers fundamentally …

The Political Incorporation Of Latino Immigrants In California, Adriana Janet Ramos

CMC Senior Theses

This paper explores and analyzes the political incorporation of Latino immigrants in California over the last several decades. Political incorporation refers to the process through which immigrants and their descendants claim their political rights and exercise their voice in politics. In order to understand the impact of Latino immigration on California state politics, the paper first examines the demographic changes in the state. This paper then provides an overview of all of the major immigration legislation in California, beginning from the anti-immigration initiatives to the California Dream Act and immigration-friendly legislation that Governor Jerry Brown signed into law in 2013.

Accounting For Accountability, Celina Su

Publications and Research

Review of the book Open Budgets: The Political Economy of Transparency, Participation, and Accountability, edited by Sanjeev Khagram, Archon Fung, and Paolo de Renzio.

The Axe Without The Handle: An Exploratory Analysis Of Eco-Terrorism And Its Relationships To U.S. Public Policy Towards Terrorism:1990-2010, Phillip Andrew Smith

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

From 1990-2010 ecoterrorist attacks by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF) created an anomaly in the U.S. with millions of dollars in property destruction. Interestingly, in a post 9/11 era, the FBI warns that the number one threat to U.S. national security is not religious terrorism, but rather environmental-group terrorism. When examining this topic further, there is a void in analysis between examining ecoterrorist attacks and U.S. public policy. Is there a statistical significant relationship between terrorist attacks by ALF/ELF and U.S. public policy towards terrorism? Is per capita income an influence on the attacks occurring …

Do Non-Citizens Vote In U.S. Elections?, Jesse T. Richman, Guishan A. Chattha, David C. Earnest

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

In spite of substantial public controversy, very little reliable data exists concerning the frequency with which non-citizen immigrants participate in United States elections. Although such participation is a violation of election laws in most parts of the United States, enforcement depends principally on disclosure of citizenship status at the time of voter registration. This study examines participation rates by non-citizens using a nationally representative sample that includes non-citizen immigrants. We find that some non-citizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and Congressional elections. Non-citizen votes …

The Media And Politics, Lauren Moses

A with Honors Projects

A Powerpoint presentation summarizing key topics in chapter 9 of the textbook American Government and Politics Today: The Essentials

Marriage And Citizenship In The United States, Shanella Gardner

Psi Sigma Siren

Most countries associate being a citizen with having certain legal rights and being born in that country, although this has not always been the case, especially in the United States. When writing the U. S. Constitution, the founding fathers were thinking of white, male landowners to be given the legal rights as citizens. This would leave the remaining population of women, African Americans and other people of color to fight to be recognized as citizens. The Naturalization Act of 1790 was the first legislative act that defined who could be citizens in the United States. It allowed citizenship for immigrants …

Racial Discrimination And The Death Penalty: An Analysis Of The United States' Judicial System, Jessica Recarey, Nerses Kopalyan

McNair Poster Presentations

Racial discrimination plays a role in the administration of the death penalty. This research analyzes the history, and past scholarly research, of the death penalty. The purpose of this research is to understand the correlation between racial discrimination and those sentenced to death. This study includes a literature review regarding the different aspects of the death penalty and race. Following the literature review, an analysis is performed of both previous literature and current death penalty statistics that augments the discussion of the death penalty.

The Modern Gender Gap In Partisanship And Ideology: A Cross-National Analysis, Tiffany Quick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis updates and expands upon the developmental theory of the gender gap in party and ideological identification originally posited by Norris and Inglehart (2000) to explain why women in advanced industrial nations are more likely to hold more leftist ideological identification than men. A comparative cross-national analysis using data from the World Values Survey (2004-2008) extends Norris and Inglehart's study, with an examination of the gender gap in advanced industrial, post-communist and developing nations. To further explore the nature of the gender gap in the United States, data from the American National Election Study (Cumulative File and 2012 cross-section) …

Economic Inequality And Democratic Representative Institutions Across Western Industrialized Democracies, Donald Plungis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the effects of political representation on economic inequality across western industrialized democracies. I explore an explanation of increases in economic inequality as a consequence of less representative democratic institutions. Explaining economic inequality in this manner is a shift from to the Transatlantic Consensus that attributes increased economic inequality to globalization. I expect to find that more representative electoral and governments institutions will be associated with lower levels of economic inequality. The analysis takes place across twenty-three countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) over the past forty years using a cross-sectional longitudinal model. Variables …

The Far-Reaching Shadow Cast By Ferguson, Kimberly Jade Norwood

Scholarship@WashULaw

In the Dred Scott case, Justice Taney remarked that black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” In The Far-Reaching Shadow Cast by Ferguson, Professor Norwood questions whether, in today’s society, Justice Taney’s sentiment still holds true. Citing examples of recent police shootings and beatings of unarmed African-Americans and personal and family experiences, Professor Norwood argues that our country is broken and needs fixing. Professor Norwood concludes that we are not the ‘post-racial’ society we claim to be and that the Michael Brown shooting, among others, provides a watershed moment to confront our country’s underlying …

The Jewish Factor: A Study Of Jewish Judicial Behavior In Religious Freedom Cases, Alan Hickey

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

No abstract provided.