Models and Methods Commons^™

Theory-Building And Tool-Building For A Science Of Dysfunctional Political Discourse, Eric Hamilton, Marguerite Williamson, Andrew Hurford

Education Division Scholarship

This paper extends a developing analytic framework for political discourse that takes place over digital social media. Earlier presentations of the framework have furnished a rationale for applying the conceptual framework of epistemic frame theory and the tools of quantitative ethnography for political discourse analysis. They have provided early existence proofs of the viability of epistemic network analysis (ENA) for rudimentary models of social media threads that involve political content. The current theoretical paper moves significantly beyond this foundation. It summarizes and deepens the explanation of the constructs of discursive transactions, response grammars, and epistemic frames in political discourse. It …

Assessing The Leverage Of Islamist Groups And Opposition Parties Alliance In Indonesia’S Regional Electoral Contest, Ari Ganjar Herdiansah, Arie Surya Gutama, Widya Setiabudi Sumadinata

Jurnal Politik

This article tempts to verify the intricate dynamics of political alliances between Islamist groups and opposition parties in Indonesian elections, focusing on the 2018 West Java gubernatorial contest. The study employs exit poll data, investigating the relationship between religiosity, politico-religious narratives, and voting behaviour. While the mobilising power of Islamist groups appeals to political parties, creating a temporary alliance, these do not guarantee electoral triumph even in a conservative region. The politico-religious propaganda, in principle, consolidates Islamist-inclined voters. Despite high levels of religiosity among voters, the alliance's strategies fail to convey this religious mobilisation into broad electoral success. This underscores …

The Cult Fascist: Establishing Cultic Behavior In Proud Boys And Incels, Aj Ashland

University Honors Theses

Is the Alt-Right a cult? Certainly, we can see religious fervor intertwine with politics as we see in the far-right, with artwork of Trump being crucified like Jesus, pierced in his side by Nancy Pelosi analogous to Longinus (Cole, 2020), or in the golden statue of Trump at CPAC (Beauchamp, 2021). But, do we see similar, potentially cultic, behavior within Alt-Right groups? It turns out we do see this behavior. Within this study, I determine via the Advanced Bonewits' Cult Danger Evaluation Frame what level of cultic behavior exists within Incels and Proud Boys. In doing so, I intend to …

Ending The False Perception Decoding The Characteristics Of Americans Who Fear Immigrants’ Impact On The Economy By Kate Riccardelli, Kate Riccardelli

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Understanding which characteristics impact Americans' position and fears towards immigrants will generate an understanding of what drives and unleashes fear-driven behavior on immigrant populations. One particular area of public perception towards immigrants that gets a high degree of political debate is immigrants' impact on the economy. This paper will evaluate the relationship between a person's social-economic status, age, and education level towards the perception that immigrants are negatively impacting and draining the American economy. The link between a fear of immigrants and the stated characteristics will be evaluated through the Chapman Survey of American Fears, a representative national survey of …

Mental Health In Massachusetts Prisons, Jeffrey Yung

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

In November of last year, former Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division released the findings of an investigation of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (MDOC). They found several violations of prisoner’ constitutionals rights for mental health cases under the Eighth Amendment. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishments for criminal defendants. The findings reveal a lack of structured mental health care for MDOC prisoners, untrained employees, and unnecessary abuse of restrictive housing for prisoners designated under a mental health watch program.

Beirut/The Other Side Of The City: The Impact Of Visual Texture Production Of The Lebanese Postmemory Generation, 1989 - Present, Mohamed Moustafa Gameel Ebada

Theses and Dissertations

In 1989, after the Ta'if agreement, the war in Lebanon started to fade, which ended years of one of the most destructive civil conflicts in the region with no decisive winner or loser. The year also marked the birth of a new Lebanese generation who did not experience the war in person. It is a generation of postmemory, a term Maria Hirsch coined to describe the reminisces of those who did not have a personal encounter with past traumatic events. However, it was not before February 2005, when Rafic Al-Hariri's violent assassination occurred, when the postmemory generation started to question …

An Inferentially Robust Look At Two Competing Explanations For The Surge In Unauthorized Migration From Central America, Nick Santos

Dissertations

The last 8 years have seen a dramatic increase in the flow of Central American apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol. Explanations for this surge in apprehensions have been split between two leading hypotheses. Most academic scholars, immigrant advocates, progressive media outlets, and human rights organizations identify poverty and violence (the Poverty and Violence Hypothesis) in Central America as the primary triggers responsible. In contrast, while most government officials, conservative think tanks, and the agencies that work in the immigration and border enforcement realm admit poverty and violence may underlie some decisions to migrate, they instead blame lax U.S. immigration …

Big Five Personality Traits And Political Orientation: An Inquiry Into Political Beliefs, Ian E. Phillips

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Personality research centered on the Big Five personality traits has heavily impacted our understanding in regards to what forces orient a person on a political spectrum. Examining how personality differences interact with political orientation, this research seeks to provide information on what makes someone either more or less likely to be liberal or conservative based on their temperament. In this paper, previous personality research is synthesized into one discussion, centered on what the effects of each trait are and how they impact political orientation, the heritability of personality, and what implications there are for such research in the realm of …

Structured For Success: Activist Networks As Key To Organizing Victories At Macalester, Hannah D. Catlin

Political Science Honors Projects

Macalester’s identity as a college is deeply rooted in its commitments to social justice,

activism, and multiculturalism. As such, it has a rich history of student social movements defined by unique, decentralized networking structures forming out of the constraints of working in a college environment. In terms of structure, what do successful Macalester social movement organizations look like? I argue that Macalester social movement organizations form concentrically nested structures and that these networks in concert with organizational tactics lead to success or failure in terms of goal acquisition. I draw on the history of Macalester student social movement organizations, highlighting …

Best Practices For Voter Engagement Within Higher Education, Alyssa Tomins

Honors Projects

It is imperative that higher education institutions learn more about how to recruit members of younger generations to participate in future elections. Young people have historically voted at low rates, but that trend has started to change in recent years as more resources are being devoted to voter engagement among young people. This leads to the interest of understanding what best practices and strategies have academic institutions utilized to advance voter engagement on their campuses. This qualitative study analyzes these best practices and strategies at 84 colleges and universities, all of whom are members of The Andrew Goodman Foundation Vote …

Ghost Of Populism: Haunting The Demos In Democracy, Chloe A. Bidne

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

Several recent elections demonstrate voters across advanced industrial economies support candidates with a populist agenda. We observe this phenomenon, for example, in the election of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States as well as across the Atlantic through the majority of voters in the UK favoring the UK Independence Party’s call to leave the European Union and return to a nationally focused agenda through Brexit. Europe allows us to be vividly aware of voter support for populist agendas through their multi-party systems, which include political parties who openly and explicitly claim a populist agenda, such as the …

Military Service And Offending Behaviors Of Emerging Adults: A Conceptual Review, Christopher Salvatore, Travis Taniguchi

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Focusing on the United States, this paper examines the impact of military service for the cohort of individuals that have experienced the social factors that characterize emerging adulthood as a unique stage in the life course. We argue that military service, as a turning point, may act differently in contemporary times compared to findings from past research. This difference is driven by changes in military service, the draft versus volunteer military service, and the prevalence of emerging adulthood. As a background, we describe emerging adulthood, examine how emerging adulthood relates to crime and deviance, explore the impact of military life …

Voter Rationality In The United States, Asael Marvel

Honors Program Theses

The decade preceding 2020 has brought into question the political rationality of the average American voter, as it seems many individuals may vote against what is best for themselves. This begs a simple question, are American voters voting in their won rational self-interest, this project looks into a myriad of theories on voter rationality and the processes behind how voters may calculate or come to their voter decisions in an election in order to answer these questions. Then using the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey creates a method to analyze whether a specific group within the US is voting rationally, …

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

Democracy In The Mena, Alexandria Petrof

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

There is not sufficient evidence that the Middle East will be able to democratize effectively. First and foremost, most attempts of implementing democracy have failed. The landscape and lack of industrialization also plays a role in the inability to apply democratic systems into this area. Lastly, the educational system, or lack thereof, struggles to educate their children and citizens as a whole and education is one of the biggest factors in the success of democracy.

The Role Of Opposition In A Democracy: A Bibliometric Analysis, Abhinav Shrivastava Mr., Richa Dwivedi Ms.

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Globally, democracy is under threat with the prevalence of authoritarian regime all over the world and the role of opposition in a democracy is an under studied subject and has not received adequate importance by researchers all over the world. The present study focuses on the bibliometrics analysis of the role of opposition in democratic system in order to understand the research status of the subject globally using SCOPUS and Web of Science databases.

The analysis shows that research has been undertaken by various organisations and researchers however, the present time demands more attention on the role of opposition so …

‘It’S Like Baking A Cake’: An Analysis Of Conscience Voting In The New Zealand House Of Representatives Since The Introduction Of The Mixed-Member Proportional System In 1996, Harrison Hosking

CMC Senior Theses

Conscience voting in the New Zealand House of Representatives offers a unique opportunity to assess Sam Peltzman’s ‘Principal-Agent Theory’ as outlined in his 1984 paper, Constituent Interest and Congressional Voting.

This thesis begins with a brief assessment of the principal-agent model (and other literature regarding parliamentary representation) before looking at the New Zealand Parliamentary system and the phenomenon of private member’s bills and how they aid the legislative process. This is followed by an exploration of a constructed dataset of conscience votes that have occurred since the inception of the mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral system in 1996. An analysis …

Right To Counsel: Improving Access To Justice In Us Indigent Defense Systems, Travis Hartman

Capstone Showcase

The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to counsel for indigent defendants. Even though a constitutional right, indigent defense in the US suffers from significant problems. While scholars have attempted to provide solutions to the problems, a question persists, How are Indigent Defense Systems impacting how Access to Justice is being provided in the United States? To answer this question, a structured, focused comparison method was utilized to evaluate US indigent defense systems. Case studies were chosen based upon the delivery and majority of funding for indigent defense coming from counties. Right to counsel for Access to Justice was defined by …

The Rawlsian Mirror Of Justice, Jessica Flanigan

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Libertarians(like me) generally disagree with orthodox Rawlsians (like Samuel Freeman) about whether Rawlsian principles of distributive justice are compatible with libertarianism.¹In this essay, I set out to explain why. In section 1, I describe the problem, which is essentially that libertarians think the Rawlsian framework does not rule out anti-statist, capitalist, and broadly libertarian approaches to distributive justice and orthodox Rawlsians think that it does. I propose that this problem arises because the Rawlsian framework is underspecified in two ways. First, the Rawlsian framework has a lot of moving parts, so people with different pre-theoretical intuitions can use …

A Survey Of Single-Use Plastic Foodware Ordinances Of The San Francisco Bay Region, Christopher Slafter

Master's Projects and Capstones

Municipal jurisdictions in the San Francisco Bay Region (SFBR) are passing comprehensive single-use plastic (SUP) foodware ordinances in response to growing public pressure, and a California mandate to achieve zero waste. SUP foodware items have become an issue of concern because they are readily available in the restaurant industry, and are regularly among the top-ten pollutants collected during beach cleanups. SUP foodware items pose a danger to marine wildlife and contribute to rising carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Policy makers in the SFBR are creating local ordinances that regulate the distribution and use of a variety of SUP foodware …

The Fiduciary Obligations Of Public Officials, Vincent R. Johnson

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

At various levels of government, the conduct of public officials is often regulated by ethical standards laid down by legislative enactments, such as federal or state statutes or municipal ordinances. These rules of government ethics are important landmarks in the field of law that defines the legal and ethical obligations of public officials. Such provisions can form the basis for the kinds of government ethics training that helps to minimize wrongful conduct by public servants and reduces the risk that the performance of official duties will be clouded by appearances of impropriety. Codified government ethics rules also frequently provide mechanisms …

Silence As A Strategy, Jarvis L. Steele

Honors College Theses

Understanding the struggle that is peaceful protest is a task that has two unexplored components. The first is how leaders of political movements and protest groups are able to influence the masses to not waiver in their non-violent, peaceful approach. The second is how political groups learn from the failures and successes of the previous campaigns. We are given these circumstances where governmental violence and abuse would normally lead to a retaliatory response from groups, but in order to maintain the fidelity of the movement leaders of these political protests have to protect the nonviolent approach. These are instances where …

Cosmopolitan Democracy: Re-Evaluation Of Globalization And World Economic System, Muhammad Dalhatu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines cosmopolitan democracy theory as a method of addressing the problems of globalization. I begin by introducing the concept of “cosmopolitan democracy.” I then proceed to discuss contemporary political climate and its relation to critiques of globalization. Finally, I conclude by examining the elaborations of cosmopolitan democracy by various theorists as a way of addressing these problems. Chapter 1 introduces the work of David Held who introduced the concept in his book, Cosmopolitan Democracy and the Global Order: Reflections on the 20^th Anniversary of Kant’s “Perpetual Peace.” Cosmopolitan democracy refers to global governance through democratic theory. Held …

Revisiting The Far Right Violent Extremist Threat: Violent Extremist Plot Success From 1948 Through 2017, Jesse Austin

Honors Theses and Capstones

Far Right violent extremists have successfully executed over 150 violent plots in the United States in just the past decade. This exploratory study analyzed Far Right violent extremist plot success with the plot success of Islamist violent extremists, Far Left violent extremists, and Single Issue violent extremists based on publicly available data from the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) for the period of 1948 through 2017. By evaluating existing literature on Far Right violent extremism and analyzing the available PIRUS data, it was discovered that while Far Right violent extremists executed more successful violent plots than …

A Challenge To Socio-Ecological Resilience: Community Based Resource Management Organizations’ Perceptions And Responses To Cannabis Cultivation In Northern California, Yvonne Everett

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Local nonprofit organizations in the Pacific Northwest have stepped up to fill a leadership void in forest management since the Timber Wars of the 1980s and 1990s. Community based resource management groups (CBRM) have focused on stewardship of ecosystem services, and leading efforts to employ local workers to restore forest ecosystems and watershed functions. In Northern California, even as CBRM capacity has grown since the Timber Wars, a new transformative challenge threatens community and landscape adaptive capacity. Cannabis cultivation, which can have significant environmental and social impacts, has become a pervasive economic driver. I used interviews to explore CBRM leaders’ …

Impact Of A Charter School On House Capitalization In A Title I Environment, Mark Haskew

Masters Theses

This study used a mixed-methods approach to determine whether a charter school could influence house capitalization and whether it could induce some families to stay in the school district. It examined home sale values around a charter school in an area covered by underperforming Title I schools. There was a positive but statistically insignificant change in a pre/post comparison of home sale prices, but the increase was consistent with nearby control schools. However, a survey of charter school families found that 25 percent would have left the district had they not been enrolled at the charter school. A plurality said …

Non-Governmental Organizations' Involvement In Poverty Alleviation In Bangladesh, Taylor N. Scheffing

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

Labeled as one of the poorest countries in the world, Bangladesh is accustomed to poverty. Beginning in the late 1970s and even more since the arrival of the millennium, Bangladesh had made significant strides towards economic development through poverty alleviation efforts brought on by the World Bank initiatives. However, widespread discontent with the World Bank has led to increased, dominant presence and involvement from non-governmental organizations. Non-governmental organizations typically share a public mission, where those in Bangladesh aim to work exclusively with those in disadvantaged, rural areas. This paper will be addressing the growing question: what are non-governmental organizations (NGOs) …

The Cross-Cultural Experiences Of Saudi Sojourners In The United States: A Study Of Intrapersonal Identity Conflict, Ahmed M. Asfahani Ph.D.

Journal of Interdisciplinary Conflict Science

What are the cross-cultural experiences of Saudi sojourners studying in the United States that lead to intrapersonal identity conflict? Sojourner identity conflict is a foundational issue in culture shock and can promote or limit positive relationships between Saudi and American students. It is important to study Saudi sojourners’ cultural backgrounds and the factors that inhibit or promote assimilation into their host culture to ensure the success of cultural exchange through providing data needed to learn how to best ameliorate the dissonance caused by identity conflict. By employing a phenomenological approach, this research provides findings relating to acculturation strategies of sojourners …

Imbalance: Mental Health In Higher Education, Heather Clark

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

No abstract provided.

Rollerskates, David Longstreth

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

No abstract provided.