American Politics Commons^™

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.

Studying Conspiracy Theory After The (Current) Rise Of Right-Wing Populism, Mark Fenster

UF Law Faculty Publications

The American historian Richard Hofstadter intended his still-influential essay on the “Paranoid Style in American Politics,” which initiated the modern study of conspiracy theories, as a response to the mid-1950s rise of right-wing populism in the US. Reflecting on the lessons we can learn from the insights and weaknesses of Hofstadter’s timely intervention into contemporary politics, as well as the author’s three decades studying conspiracy theories, the chapter asks how current academic work, which takes place within and responds to another rise in rightwing populism, should understand and intervene in the present and prepare for the future.

A Little Bird Told Me: The Lived Experiences Of Officers Who Participated In Deep Undercover Programs, Oakley Fungaroli

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

This study used interpretative phenomenological analysis to gather and analyze semi-structured interviews of seven participants who took part in deep undercover programs between the 1970s and 1990s. In the early 1980s, under pressure from civil rights advocates, law enforcement implemented policies restricting the use of undercover police officers in non-violent intelligence investigations. The new guidelines resulted in robust selection and training requirements for deep undercover assignments which became focused on those who advocated criminal acts in furtherance of social or political objectives. The lived experiences revealed that while intelligence guidelines intended to protect civil rights applied to all personnel, training …

Effects Of Dehumanization And Disgust-Eliciting Language On Attitudes Toward Immigration: A Sentiment Analysis Of Twitter Data, Katherine S. Wahrer, Cynthia J. Najdowski, John V. Passarelli

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Attitudes towards immigration have been shown to be driven by dehumanization and disgust. The more people dehumanize immigrants and the more disgusted they feel, the more negative attitudes they tend to have toward immigrants. However, little is known about how exposure to social media content that links dehumanization, disgust, and immigration influences users’ attitudes on this issue. This is important to consider because the majority of adults in the United States are on social media. We used Twitter data, machine learning, and sentiment analysis to investigate whether exposure to dehumanizing or disgust-eliciting tweets about immigration impacts users’ own sentiment toward …

Partisan Panel Composition And Reliance On Earlier Opinions In The Circuit Courts, Stuart M. Benjamin, Byungkoo Kim, Kevin M. Quinn

Faculty Articles

Does the partisan composition of three-judge panels affect how earlier opinions are treated and thus how the law develops? Using a novel data set of Shepard’s treatments for all cases decided in the U.S. courts of appeals from 1974 to 2017, we investigate three different versions of this question. First, are panels composed of three Democratic (Republican) appointees more likely to follow opinions decided by panels of three Democratic (Republican) appointees than are panels composed of three Republican (Democratic) appointees? Second, does the presence of a single out-party judge change how a panel relies on earlier decisions compared to what …

Rhetorical Demagoguery: An Exploration Of Trump’S And Hitler’S Rise To Power, Tanner Horne

Undergraduate Honors Theses

While many scholars have examined the rhetoric of President Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler individually, there is a void of scholarly work that highlights the similarities between the two leaders’ use of grandiloquent language to stoke the passions of their perspective nations. In the past one hundred years, rhetoric and propaganda have been employed to push political agendas that are divisive and dangerous. Trump’s incendiary vocabulary–“enemy of the people,” “vermin,” “retribution,” etc., employed frequently throughout his campaign and presidency, in many ways echoes Hitler's speeches and declarations. While their political strategies ultimately differed greatly, a close analysis of their speeches, …

Demagoguery And Political Rhetoric: A Comparative Analysis Of Father Charles E. Coughlin And Donald J. Trump, Charlotte Moody

History and Political Science | Senior Theses

Many Americans can still recall James Madison’s warning against mob rule in The Federalist Papers. What Madison did not articulate as memorably, however, was that it is not the mob we need to fear, but the demagogue. Who is the one fueling the fire through their use of sensational rhetoric? A term from ancient Greek mythology, a demagogue generally means a persuasive orator and leader of the people. The historical demagogue has many iterations in modern American politics that continue to undermine democracy and justice. However, there has not been a comprehensive study comparing two of the arguably most influential …

Hablando Sobre Inmigración: How Members Of The House Of Representatives In 118th Congress Frame The Issue Of Immigration, Guadalupe Castañeda Martinez

History and Political Science | Senior Theses

Historically, Immigration has played a critical role in forming the nation’s identity, economic prosperity, and promoting cultural diversity. Considering that the issue of Immigration has been in the news and is considered by many to be important and in need of policy solutions, little progress has been made on passing comprehensive immigration reform since the 113 th Congress in 2013. How members of Congress talk about Immigration is important because framing can influence public opinion, shaping perceptions of the issue and affecting policy decisions. Members may use their platform to communicate how they think about policy issues. Research has been …

Speaking, Running, Leading: Black Women In American Politics, Sherelle A. Roberts

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

This dissertation examines African American women as constituents, candidates, and policy entrepreneurs. It illuminates the ways in which Black women navigate the complexities of politics, while balancing their equally complex intersectional identities. It critiques the notion of African American women as politically marginalized actors and highlights the ways in which they surmount social, cultural, and political disadvantage to gain political success.

The Populist Wave: Unpacking The Global Drivers Of 21st Century Right-Wing Populist Support, Ellie Fallon

Honors Theses

This thesis investigates the underlying causes of the global rise in right-wing populism support in the twenty-first century. I will examine both the origins of these shifts in public opinion and their consequences for political systems and global interactions. My analyses will take two forms: (1) a cross-national analysis of the rise in right-wing populism in 34 of the 38 member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to explore the demographic factors that exhibit a relationship with populist attitudes and (2) case studies of right-wing populism in the contemporary United States (with particular attention to former …