Comparative Politics Commons^™

Agenda Setting And Gridlock In A Multiparty Coalitional Presidential System: The Case Of Brazil, Taeko Hiroi, Lucio Renno

Selected Works Temporary Series

No abstract provided.

Agenda Setting And Gridlock In A Multiparty Coalitional Presidential System: The Case Of Brazil, Taeko Hiroi, Lucio Renno

Departmental Papers (PS)

No abstract provided.

Who Cares What They're Saying: Participation In International Development Analysis, Sari N. Hoffman-Dachelet

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Participatory methods are the established methodology in international aid and development. Within this paradigm things that are more participatory are thought of as being more impactful, however, the actual success or failure of any given international project is measured by its evaluation team. These evaluations are vitally important in regards to funding, both for future programs and continuing programs, and in shaping the methodology of future programs. These evaluations are also non-participatory. Do the evaluations impact the lives of participants and how do they reflect “good” development? The measures of impact differ from the measures of success, this project looks …

On Multiethnic Schools In Consociational Democracies: A Comparative Analysis Of Brčko District And Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jusuf Šarančić

Lawrence University Honors Projects

The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement both ended the Bosnian War and created the consociational democracy that exists in Bosnia and Herzegovina to this day. The ethnic autonomy created by the Dayton Agreement has resulted in a frozen conflict between ethnic groups that has manifested itself in the country’s monoethnic education system. This study explores the short-term stability under consociationalism and the long-term stability under a multiethnic education system. Additionally, this study explains the importance of the country’s only multiethnic education system in Brčko District and how it came into existence.

"They Have Sold The Clouds": Queering Indigenous Politics In Colombia, Taylor O. Ramsey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In a study of Colombian politics, I use a queer theoretical lens to explore the relationship between the state and two specific indigenous groups from Northern Colombia to better understand the state and power relations embedded in it. I look for queer temporalities, spaces, and nonnormative practices that arise out of how the law interrogates and interacts with indigenous people using a queer theoretical lens as a critical methodology. I argue that the Colombian state's interactions with indigenous groups create queer spaces/conceptual borders, particularly with regard to law and the state's ability to biopolitically regulate its citizens. It is within …

Scotland In European Perspective: The Mainz-Germersheim Conference Before The Referendum, Patrick G. Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Reviews the published papers on political, literary, and cultural aspects of Scottish cultural identity from a conference held at Johnannes Gutenberg University-Mainz at Germersheim, Germany, in October 2013, before the narrowly-unsuccessful Scottish Independence referendum of the following year ["Indyref"], and discusses their continuing relevance in Scottish attitudes to the upcoming United Kingdom referendum on British withdrawal from the European Union ["Brexit"].

The Current State Of Access To Basic Education For Syrian Refugee Children Living In The Za’Atari Camp, Theresa L. Frey

Capstone Collection

Using Rodman’s (2006) International Education Analytical Inquiry Matrix as a theoretical framework, the purpose of this study is to examine the current state of access to basic primary education for Syrian Refugee Children Living in the Za’atari camp. Within the scope of this study, access is examined in three parts, including:

(1) Who is accessing education within Za’atari and who is not?

(2) How are certain groups accessing education?

(3) What is the learning environment of Za’atari?

In addition to addressing existing issues of access to basic education in Za’atari, this study examines efforts made towards increasing access. By examining …

Immersive Practices: Dilemmas Of Power And Privilege In Community Engagement With Students In A Rural South African Village, J. Michael Williams, Lisa M. Nunn

Engaging Pedagogies in Catholic Higher Education (EPiCHE)

Power is manifested in many ways within immersive study abroad experiences. One of the paradoxes of this reality is that structures of power simultaneously create the conditions necessary for immersive community engagement programs to exist as well as limit the action, voice, and autonomy of the actors involved in the community engagement. Unequal power relations are an enduring dilemma of this kind of work even when the intention is to “join in community” with others to learn, create, and build relationships side by side for mutually beneficial purposes. In this paper we offer lessons we have learned, and continue to …

Hiv/Aids And The European Union, Victor Hammarin

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is an ailment like no other. Despite huge improvements in treatments for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, those living with the disease continue to suffer from treatment inequality and discrimination. This is especially true in the European Union (EU), which is a supranational entity that works to improve prosperity, equality, and wellbeing among member-states. Despite extensive EU efforts to improve the standard of living across the inter-governmental body, treatment inequality for those living with HIV/AIDS in the EU continues to be a major issue. This study hypothesized that a strong EU initiative, which …

Beyond Metropolises: Hybridity In A Transnational Context, Raihan Sharif

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Beyond metropolises and within transnational contexts, investigating hybridity discourses is long overdue. This article argues that the epistemic violence embedded in such discourse has grave implications for the very impoverished nations and peoples with whom it claims solidarity and that, because this discourse is trendy in academia, its service to neoliberal capitalism is both easy to miss and important to expose. Interstices of postcolonial hybridity discourses, development discourses, and environmental justice discourses—dominant versions of which are segregated from contextual issues—as produced in Western academia and exported to third world countries for appropriation as developmental efforts—reveal epistemic violence, the manipulation of …

How Voters Hold The European People’S Party Accountable In European Parliament Elections, Douglas D. Page

Political Science Faculty Publications

The established consensus is that voters do not hold European Union leaders accountable for their management of the economy in European Parliament elections, which contributes to the EU’s democratic deficit. However, the existing research misses a comparison between those who feel that the national government is responsible for their economic situation and those who feel the EU is responsible. The analysis is based on surveys of the 28 EU members. I find that when one assigns more responsibility to the EU than the national government for national economic conditions, satisfaction with the economy increases the likelihood of voting for the …

“Bracketing” Foreign Policy From Domestic Affairs: A New Paradigm For International Negotiation And Decision-Making, Scott Gerschwer Ph.D.

Journal of Interdisciplinary Conflict Science

This paper argues that geo-political negotiators must separate domestic issues from their calculations and consider only strategic goals and international concerns when working through issues with other global leaders. The impetus for this paper is a recent poll that shows that 52% of Americans want to bomb Iran, apparently without considering the consequences. I will give some history, present some recent cases and attempt to create a mechanism for separating international and domestic issues to relieve a source of pressure on negotiators.

Nuclear Power Plant Policy Comparison Between The U.S. And Republic Of Korea, Vara Ha

Sustainability and Social Justice

Five years after the Fukushima accident, people and countries still argue about the opportunity costs of denuclearization. While nuclear power generation has safety and waste issues, it is carbon free. Climate change has created more pressure for greenhouse gas reduction, so a few countries have decided to maintain or even increase nuclear power generation. The United States ranks first for using nuclear power produced by electricity generation, while the Republic of Korea, the closest country in proximity to Japan, ranks fourth in countries that use nuclear power. In fact, Korea even rapidly increased nuclear business after the Fukushima accident. Despite …

Exchange Patterns And Relations In Collaborative Governance., Charles Wharton Kaye-Essien

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Collaborative governance has received considerable attention in recent years. From environmental resource management to public safety, collaborative governance continues to play a vital role in regional problem solving. In spite of this increasing popularity previous attempts to model the political, economic, and demographic determinants of collaboration have in most cases produced inconsistent results, thereby undermining the ability to generalize from such findings. Additionally, our understanding of the relational patterns that emanate from collaborative agreements remains fairly rudimentary. The main objective of this research is to address some of the gaps in the literature and improve our understanding of collaborative governance …

Islam Vs. The World, Brooks M. Fiedler

Op-Ed Pieces

Op Eds, or opinion editorials, are typically published in daily newspapers and can raise awareness about a particular topic or aim to persuade others. For this project each student wrote an op-ed in which they presented their opinion or thoughts about the issue of islamophobic discourse coming from Republican candidates, especially Donald Trump.

Rape And Sexual Violence: Questionable Inevitability And Moral Responsibility In Armed Conflict, Katherine W. Bogen

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

Wartime sexual violence is a critical human rights issue that usurps the autonomy of its victims as well as their physical and psychological safety. It occurs in both ethnic and non-ethnic wars, across geographic regions, against both men and women, and regardless of the “official” position of commanders, states, and armed groups on the use of rape as tactic of war. This problem is current, pervasive, and global in spite of the status of wartime sexual violence perpetration as a crime against humanity and the capacity of the international criminal court to indict offenders. Though some scholars have argued that …

Geopolitics Of The 2016 Australian Defense White Paper And Its Predecessors, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Australia released the newest edition of its Defense White Paper, describing Canberra’s current and emerging national security priorities, on February 25, 2016. This continues a tradition of issuing defense white papers since 1976. This work will examine and analyze the contents of this document as well as previous Australian defense white papers, scholarly literature, and political statements assessing their geopolitical significance. It will also examine public input into Australian defense white papers and the emerging role of social media in this public involvement. It concludes by evaluating whether Australia has the political will and economic resources necessary to fulfill its …

Global Paths To Enlightenment: A Foundation Scholar Study Abroad To The Dominican Republic, Tacy Allan

Honors Theses

There are many different ways for students to gain a multicultural awareness and a global focus, which are important tools for their lives. Study abroad opportunities are seen as one of the widest-reaching and best hands-on learning paths that can be taken to broaden the horizons of students. This proposal combines service learning, a social justice issue (clean water), and global impact; giving students the chance to learn what is here in Kalamazoo and what is in Dominican Republic, how those issues compare and contrast as well as how each location is dealing with these issues. This proposed class will …

Exploring Cross-National Differences In The Incarceration Of Women: A Conjunctive Analysis Approach, Breanna Boppre, Terance D. Miethe, Emily J. Salisbury

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

Cross-national studies of imprisonment rates have examined the social, political, and economic conditions associated with criminal punishments. However, because of the higher numbers of male incarcerated and the lack of national data disaggregated by gender, most previous research on imprisonment rates has focused directly or indirectly on the socio-economic predictors of male imprisonment rates. Using disaggregated data for 128 nations, the current study employs the method of conjunctive analysis to explore the unique and common effects of particular social conditions that underlie female incarceration rates. Measures of nations’ social development, violent crime rates, socio-economic inequality, and political instability are used …

Slavery And Freedom In Theory And Practice, David Watkins

Political Science Faculty Publications

Slavery has long stood as a mirror image to the conception of a free person in republican theory. This essay contends that slavery deserves this central status in a theory of freedom, but a more thorough examination of slavery in theory and in practice will reveal additional insights about freedom previously unacknowledged by republicans. Slavery combines imperium (state domination) and dominium (private domination) in a way that both destroys freedom today and diminishes opportunities to achieve freedom tomorrow. Dominium and imperium working together are a greater affront to freedom than either working alone. However, an examination of slavery in practice, …

Lovecidal: Walking With The Disappeared [Table Of Contents], Trinh T. Minh-Ha

Cinema & Media Studies

“Lovecidal: Walking with the Disappeared is filled with provocation and guided by evocation. Encompassing various forms (poetry, treatise, memoir, and historiography) and capaciously conceived, Trinh T. Minh-ha’s contemplation of war, state-authorized violence, state-sanctioned ‘security,’ and international amnesia is skillfully tempered by observations of beauty, humanity, and resistance. To say that this is an important book is in many ways an understatement; rather, Lovecidal is transformative.” —Cathy Schlund-Vials, author of War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work

Black Praxis: The Trace Of Jamesian Pragmatism In Duboisian Scholar Activism, Jerome D. Clarke

Student Publications

Philosophy and activism formed a mutualist relationship in regards to 20th-century Black American politics. Emancipatory theories undergirded the civil disobedience and reformist action of the entire century. W.E.B. DuBois, renowned African-American academic at the forefront of American and Pan-Africanist liberation movements, is often divorced from his originary philosophical roots. As he became the first Black PhD graduate of Harvard University, his mentor was philosopher and psychologist William James. James is the forefather of American Pragmatism, a school of thought still alive and dynamic in this day. DuBoisian scholars tend however to stress the German Idealist influences on DuBois’s thought. Informed …

Needle Exchange Programs And Hiv/Aids: A Comparison Of The Use Of Harm Reduction Methods In Switzerland And The United States Of America, Margaret House

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper explores the connections between needle exchange programs and rates of HIV/AIDS in Switzerland and the United States of America. While these two countries are very similar in their general political philosophies, they have some key cultural and historical differences which has shaped their responses to HIV/AIDS and injection drug use. Switzerland’s unique experience with a very open injection drug use scene in the 1980s guided this country to a more pragmatic, harm reduction-based response. By contrast, United States responded to the AIDS epidemic that struck violently in the 1980s with a mix of fear and denial. Though both …

"Chinese Military Space Power: U.S. Department Of Defense Annual Reports, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Following instructions received from the U.S. Congress in the 2000 National Defense Authorization Act, the Department of Defense prepared an annual report on Chinese military power. This report contains classified and unclassif ied editions. Documenting Chinese military space power developments was one of the provisions in this law’s authorizing language. This article will examine how Chinese military space power documents have been described by the Department of Defense during this report's existence through 2015 and detail how members of Congress and Congressional committee hearing witnesses reacted to these developments in Congressional hearing transcripts and in Congressional debate through Fall 2015.

Sustainable Development Goals Worth Sharing, Erika Simpson

Political Science Publications

The international community has agreed upon another set of goals for the next 15 years. On the table are no less than 169 objectives and 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The new aspirations are summarized and the merits and demerits of further elaboration and measurement including country-specific deadlines and targets are discussed. The hefty budget to achieve all 17 goals is estimated at more than $4 trillion US a year. North American policy-makers need to be aware of humankind’s shared aspirations as they consider the new and expensive SDGs. Foreign aid is one of the instruments of North American foreign …

Honors Senior Capstone Portfolio, Brooke M. Doss

KSU Journey Honors College Capstones and Theses

This Honors Senior Capstone Thesis seeks to present an analyze the current war between Ukraine and Russia by comparing an contrasting three countries' responses to this international crisis--Poland, France, and Germany.

The West And The Rest Of Us: Islamic Militancy, Refugee Crisis And The Migration Wave Towards Europe, Simeon Onyemachi Hilary Alozieuwa Ph.D.

Journal of Interdisciplinary Conflict Science

The recent migration wave to Europe from the Arab world thrusts to the fore for serious discourse, an issue the world has hitherto shied away from: the gradual Islamization of the world beginning with the west. The issue is not the Islamic faith itself. Certain elements of the faithful are imbued with hegemonic-domination tendencies marked by the excessive obsession to obliterate others’ cultures. This paper views the Euro/West-ward movement of the Muslim Arab refugees/migrants as a grand strategy for the Islamization agenda; the smuggled Islamists militias are its foot-soldiers. The West needs to interrogate its overextended human rights regimes.

Why Adopt E-Voting? Study On Village Leader Elections In Musi Rawas, South Sumatera, Ikhsan Darmawan, Nurul Nurhandjati

Jurnal Politik

This article elaborates the e-voting adoption in village leader elections held in Musi Rawas Regency, South Sumatera, during the period of 2013 to early 2015. This paper aims at answering the question of why the government of Musi Rawas has adopted e-voting in the village leader elections. More specifically, this paper aims at identifying the motives underlying the policy to adopt e-voting in village leader elections in Musi Rawas. This article is based on the field research held between February and March, 2015. The research employs the qualitative approach. Data is collected through in-depth interview, observation, and news collected from …

U.S. Congressional Committee Hearings On Korea During The 113th Congress 2013-2014: Overseeing Multifaceted Aspects Of Washington's Peninsular Interests, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Numerous U.S. government agencies are involved in developing and implementing U.S. policy toward Korean Peninsula events, trends, and developments. Those studying U.S. government policies toward this region need to pay particular attention to the role played by U.S. Congressional committees in this policymaking. Congressional committees are responsible for approving new legislation, revising existing legislation, funding U.S. government programs and conducting oversight of these programs. This work examines Congressional committee hearings and debate during the 113th Congress (2013–2014) and reveals that multiple Congressional committees with varying jurisdictions seek to shape U.S. government Korean Peninsula policy and that this policymaking covers more …

Geopolitics Of The 2015 British Defense White Paper And Its Historical Predecessors, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

On November 23, 2015 the United Kingdom (UK) released a defense white paper detailing its national security strategic objectives. This work examines the geopolitical, economic, and strategic implications of this document and compares it with recent and historical defense white paper documents issued by the British government. It scrutinizes the text of these documents and relevant scholarly literature analyzing them while also examining the national security threats facing the UK at the time of their issuance and assesses whether the 2015 document will be supported with requisite political will, military personnel, and financial support to carry out its objectives