Other Political Science Commons^™

Road To Recovery: Recidivism And The Mclean County Drug Court, Julia Neaves

Student Research – Stevenson Center

This study explores the effectiveness of the McLean County Drug Court at reducing time to recidivism using survival analysis techniques. Data on 146 drug court participants was collected using the county’s proprietary case management systems. Findings suggest that length of drug court programming significantly reduces time to recidivism. Unfortunately, black offenders and offenders with prior criminal history were found to return to the prison system more rapidly than other groups, suggesting that drug court programming may not be addressing the greater systemic issues present in the criminal justice system. These findings collectively inform policy recommendations provided to county administrators and …

Englewood: The Impact Of An Underserved Community That Is Faced By Violence: Politicians Vs. Residents Vs. Advocates, Ouidie M. Pollard

All Capstone Projects

This study examines the impact that violence has on an underserved community and its opportunity for revitalization. It attempts to reveal and analyze significant differences of opinion among residents, politicians, and other stakeholders in the Englewood community of Chicago, focusing primarily on what is needed to revitalize the community and reduce the level of violence in it. One key research finding is that there is a significant disconnect between residents of Englewood, the politicians who represent them, and activists and social-service providers who work with them in the community. Although there was no one clear reason for the disconnect, this …

Peace Profile: Christiana Thorpe, Whitney Mcintyre Miller, Michael Wundah

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"The profile of an illustrious Sierra Leonean, Dr. Christiana Thorpe, epitomizes a success story worthy of emulation. The cultivation of sustainable peace and political stability through the eyes of social activism, service for gender parity, and electoral and education reforms are at the heart of this account. Christiana’s kind heartedness and relentless urge to labor in the service of her country and mankind make her a unique and fascinating peace maker."

Review Of Developing Quantitative Literacy Skills In History And The Social Sciences: A Web-Based Common Core Approach By Kathleen W. Craver, Victor J. Ricchezza, H L. Vacher

Numeracy

Kathleen W. Craver. Developing Quantitative Literacy Skills in History and Social Sciences: A Web-Based Common Core Standards Approach (Lantham MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2014). 191 pp.
ISBN 978-1-4758-1050-9 (cloth); ISBN …-1051-6 (pbk); ISBN…-1052-3 (electronic).

This book could be a breakthrough for teachers in the trenches who are interested in or need to know about quantitative literacy (QL). It is a resource providing 85 topical pieces, averaging 1.5 pages, in which a featured Web site is presented, described, and accompanied by 2-4 critical-thinking questions purposefully drawing on data from the Web site. The featured Web sites range from …

Why Terrorist Networks Maintain Viability Within Today’S Modern Society., Cade Resnick Ph.D., Amy Guimond Ph.D, Heather Wellman Ph.D., Shawna Resnick M.S.

Journal of Interdisciplinary Conflict Science

Common concepts of terrorism refer to acts which are intended to create a system of fear. The ideological argument for terrorism relates to a politically and emotionally charged scenario in which terrorism is necessary. The development of a terrorist organization requires an environment that is ripe with social degradation and has idealistic minded people who are able to believe in a cause. The organization utilizes a social system to maintain its own stability and to retain the people who are involved within its self-contained community. Suffering oppression from its own government or an-other nation is a crucial component in fostering …

Analyzing Reproductive Policy: Patriarchal Legitimization And Women In Latin America, Shannon C. Magni

Honors Scholar Theses

This paper examines the way in which gendered violence is carried out as a way for the formal state and the Catholic Church to negotiate power. While examples of a much larger trend, three Latin American countries are discussed in detail. The first case occurred in Nicaragua, where a 9-year-old victim of rape was denied an abortion by both the state and the Church. The second case examined is the use of rape as a torture tactic by the military junta in Argentina during the Dirty War from 1976 to 1983. The final case examined is that of the forced …

Microconsignment As Magic Or Sleight-Of-Hand: How Social Entrepreneurship Affects Women's Political And Economic Participation In Guatemala, Briana Bardos

Honors Scholar Theses

Much research has been done on increasing the amount of female participation in both the formal economy and political sphere across the globe. This project seeks to go beyond this idea and analyze whether economic empowerment leads to increased political participation. By analyzing a specific type of empowerment, social entrepreneurship, through the specific lens of Soluciones Comunitarias’ MicroConsignment Model, my paper looks to explore if and how women in Guatemala are affected by this model politically and economically. Existing work in the field of women’s social movements makes clear the linkage between social mobilization and positive outcomes, such as increased …

An Intersectional Approach To Criminological Theory: Incorporating The Intersectionality Of Race And Gender Into Agnew's General Strain Theory, Wyatt Brown

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

Mainstream criminological theories often fail to incorporate demographic characteristics (which are robust predictors of criminal behavior). Also, many scholars suggest that theories of criminality need to move beyond sex or race or class etc. and utilize these dynamic characteristics in tandem. This theoretical perspective is often referred to as intersectionality. There is some criminological literature on the individual effects of these demographic characteristics as they represent social status as such they interact to effect experience, agency, and power. This analysis discusses how studying the intersectionality of gender and race may change explanations of criminal behavior. Specifically, how knowledge of gender …

Shelby County V. Holder: Nullification, Racial Entitlement, And The Civil Rights Counterrevolution, Albert L. Samuels

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

- 188 - Shelby County v. Holder: Nullification, Racial Entitlement, and the Civil Rights Counterrevolution Albert L. Samuels Southern University The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) which invalidated the “coverage formula” of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 bears an eerie resemblance to the spirit of the Civil Rights Cases (1883). In a tone similar to the one exhibited by the Supreme Court in The Civil Rights Cases, Chief Justice Roberts cited progress achieved in electoral participation and office holding by African Americans as evidence that the special protections that the Voting …

The Winding Journey To Justice: An Analysis Of The Voting Rights Act On Disenfranchised Populations And Its Impact In The State Of Georgia, Kristie Roberts-Lewis, Lakerri Mack

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

Today, the American landscape is more racially and ethnically diverse, yet minority populations have been and will likely be disenfranchised in the Post-Section 4 era. Minority voter participation Post-VRA has experienced some gains but achieving equality in terms of access and civic participation may be compromised. Hence, section one of this research will provide an introduction and highlight the conceptual framework that guides it. Section II will first provide a historical analysis of the significance of the VRA and its impact on minority voting rights from 1965 to the present. Section III will outline the methodology and theoretical framework that …

Editors’ Introduction: Exploratory Issues On Section 4 Of The U.S. Voting Rights Act Of 1965, Andrew I.E. Ewoh, Sarita Mccoy Gregory

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

No abstract provided.

Antidiscrimination Versus Nondiscrimination: Competing Perspectives On The Voting Rights Act, David Blanding

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

The Voting Rights Act is perhaps the most successful civil rights law ever. Yet while one set of scholars regards the legislation’s success as evidence that it remains necessary and appropriate, another set of scholars regards that success as a sign that the VRA is obsolete and inappropriate. In this article, I argue that disagreement about the VRA stems from two fundamentally different analytical approaches. The antidiscrimination paradigm focuses on how key indicators of political empowerment have progressed since 1965. The nondiscrimination paradigm focuses on how far those indicators are from what would be observed in the absence of racial …

Redistributing Power In Mississippi: The Reversal Of Section 4 Of The Voting Rights Act, Gloria J. Billingsley, Sylvester Murray

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 unconstitutional, essentially defanging preclearance requirements of Section 5 and leaving racial and other previously disenfranchised minorities unprotected. Using social contract theory as the theoretical framework, empirical field study research was used to examine whether the Voting Rights Act has achieved the results in Mississippi that the Supreme Court’s decision to revoke Section 4 has assumed. Data were collected on race-specific voter registration and voting data, measures of vote discrimination, litigations and Mississippi legislative activity regarding voting rights. Findings indicate that the gap between minority and …

Thin Vs. Thick Morality: Ethics And Gender In International Development Programs, Richard K. Ghere

Political Science Faculty Publications

This study examines the ethical dimensions of gender-focused international development initiatives undertaken by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and similar agencies. Specifically, it presents three case studies that depict how specific development initiatives in, respectively, India, Tanzania, and Senegal address gender disparities and power relationships. These case studies support the general conclusion that ethically committed development NGOs find difficulty in encouraging women (and men) to reverse oppressive power status-quos in messy contexts.

Guide To The 1948-1990 Archive Of The Inter-University Case Program, Edwin A. Bock

Public Administration - All Scholarship

Between 1948 and 1990, the Inter-University Case Program (ICP)—named during its early years “The Committee on Public Administration Cases” (CPAC)—published five case books and 170 individual studies of government policy-making and administration. The Program was created by educators who had spent over three years working in Washington wartime agencies. They wanted to show their post-war university students an aspect of public administration that was largely ignored by prewar textbooks: namely, the civil servant’s role in the making and carrying out of public policies. And they wanted to demonstrate to professors of public administration who had not had personal experience at …

Waste And Duplication In Nasa Programs: The Need To Enhance U.S. Space Program Efficiency, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

The U.S. Government faces acute budgetary deficits and national debt problems in the Obama Administration. These problems have been brought about by decades of unsustainable government spending affecting all agencies including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (NASA). An outgrowth of this fiscal profligacy is the presence of wasteful and duplicative programs within NASA that prevent this agency from achieving its space science and human spaceflight objectives. These problems occur due to mismanagement of these programs from NASA and the creation of these programs by the U.S. Congress and congressional committees. This occurs because congressional appropriators tend to be more …

Challenging The Political Assumption That “Guns Don’T Kill People, Crazy People Kill People!”, Heath J. Hodges, Mario Scalora

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Every time an infamous mass shooting takes place, a storm of rhetoric sweeps across this country with the fury of a wild fire. “Why are we letting these people carry guns?” “Why were they not hospitalized?” “The government needs to crack down on this issue!” What is the government’s response to these cries of concern? Politicians and the media attempt to ease public fears by drawing tenuous connections among a handful of poorly understood tragedies. The salient commonality is that these high-profile shooters had some history of mental illness. A cursory review of the Internet will paint a troubling picture …

Evaluating The “Success” Of Disarmament, Demobilization, And Reintegration Programs: The Case Of Congo-Brazzaville, Zachary Karazsia

Journal of Interdisciplinary Conflict Science

The end of hostilities between warring factions in Congo-Brazzaville has marked a decisive moment in the state’s developmental history. Post conflict reconstruction is a foundational component of public policies that restore order within society, igniting the engines of economic development, and in obtaining sustainable peace. In recent years, Africa has experienced a disproportionate share of conflicts compared with other regions; and leads the world in the number of present intrastate conflicts. Since the end of the Cold War, some African states have made advances in post conflict peacebuilding and intergroup reconciliation. This article focuses on post conflict reconstruction through the …

Feasibility Analysis And Strategic Measures For Promoting Viable New Urban Development, Elizabeth J. Farr

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis demonstrates that New Urbanism is both an advisable and feasible method for reducing carbon emissions to mitigate global climate change. New Urban areas commonly generate lower carbon emissions compared to conventional suburban development due to lower car use and higher levels of walking and use of other forms of transportation. Economic and political feasibility of New Urban development is determined by analyzing case studies, housing price premia, financing, and fiscal impact. The many contexts and perspectives involved in the planning process are analyzed to determine if New Urbanism is advisable in the larger setting in which developers, advocates, …

Soft Power Played On The Hardwood: United States Diplomacy Through Basketball, Joseph Bertka Eyen

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis demonstrates the importance of basketball as a form of soft power and a diplomatic asset to better achieve American foreign policy, which is defined and referred to as basketball diplomacy. Basketball diplomacy is also a lens to observe the evolution of American power from 1893 through present day. Basketball connects and permeates foreign cultures and effectively disseminates American influence unlike any other form of soft power, which is most powerfully illustrated by the United States’ basketball relationship with China. American basketball diplomacy will become stronger and connect with more countries with greater influence, and exist without relevant competition, …

Framing The Question, "Who Governs The Internet?", Robert J. Domanski

Publications and Research

There remains a widespread perception among both the public and elements of academia that the Internet is “ungovernable”. However, this idea, as well as the notion that the Internet has become some type of cyber-libertarian utopia, is wholly inaccurate. Governments may certainly encounter tremendous difficulty in attempting to regulate the Internet, but numerous types of authority have nevertheless become pervasive. So who, then, governs the Internet? This book will contend that the Internet is, in fact, being governed, that it is being governed by specific and identifiable networks of policy actors, and that an argument can be made as to …

Pillars Of Power: An Anthropological Examination Of Social Control In The Democratic People's Republic Of Korea, Ryan Michael Walker

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The goal of this thesis is to examine how the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea uses social control to enforce its will over its people. This examination will be based around social control mechanisms used in three separate areas of society. I referred to these three areas of social control as pillars of power. The first pillar of power is control over the economy and distribution of resources. The second pillar is control and influence over culture and the flow of information. The third pillar of power is the monopoly of force, both the ability to use …

Strength In Numbers: Collaborating To Support Nonprofit Advocacy, Emily J. Shields

Graduate Research Papers

The focus of this research is to examine the current literature on the nature and level of nonprofit lobbying activity, as well as the barriers that keep that activity relatively low in most cases. It will also consider factors that impact whether a nonprofit organization's leadership chooses to engage in lobbying activity, what makes that activity successful, and how collaborations can support greater and more effective activity. This review will help to provide best practices and recommendations to nonprofit executives, leaders, and board members who are interested in being a part of critical policy conversations and influencing the overarching, systemic …

Actra - A Case Study For Threat Information Sharing, Jon C. Haass, Gail-Joon Ahn, Frank Grimmelmann

Publications

This paper provides a case study for information sharing within a public/private not-for-profit partnership organization called ACTRA – Arizona Cyber Threat Response Alliance, Inc.. This initiative is comprised of public and private entities with government agencies as invited guests aligned around the goal of improved response to cyber security events. Technical, political, legal and organizational issues arise when multiple parties attempt to exchange information in a formal setting. Benefits and specific solutions developed are discussed. The study concludes with several areas for future improvement and investigation as well as recommendations for newly forming sharing groups.

Kontestasi Politik Dan Perimbangan Kekuasaan Dalam Perumusan Dan Implementasi Uu Md3 2014, Meidi Kosandi

Jurnal Politik

This paper discusses the politics of policy making behind the signing of the parliamen¬tary institutional arrangement law (UU MD3 2014) from new institutionalism approach. The policy incites controversy over domination of one coalition over the other and the future of legislative-executive inter-institutional relations. This study argues that in the policy making, the drive for power domination in the parliament and the dynamics of contestation in the presidential election strongly affected its process. The absence of convergence and political transactional cost between coalitions pointed us to the lack of relevance of rational choice institutionalism theories in explaining the politics of UU …

The Underlying Factors Driving The Push For Universal Suffrage In Hong Kong, Anthony Hoyin Wong

Political Science

This paper examines the current civil unrest in Hong Kong to determine the underlying causes that are driving Occupy Central and its affiliates to pressure the Central Government in Beijing and the Hong Kong government for universal suffrage. Drawing upon data from the 2003, 2007, and 2010 Asian Barometer, there has been a gradual decline in the level of trust in the Legislative Council and Hong Kong government as the majority of Hong Kong residents have expressed increasing uncertainty about their future economic situation along with their continual distrust in the abilities of government officials to serve the public. From …

Creatures Of Incoherence: Dissecting The Drivers, History, And Cognition Of Attitudinal Incongruence In The American Body Politic, Timothy Collins

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Most American conservatives and liberals wield contradictory political attitudes. This dissertation explores what drives this “attitudinal incongruence.” First, I define and operationalize my terminology and situate the topic within social and political psychology to formulate my central model and theory of ideologically asymmetrical application of (1) individuals’ psychological and cognitive traits, and (2) individuals’ social identity and environmental traits. This leads to the overarching hypothesis that conservatives’ incongruities are more strongly driven by internal forces, and liberals’ by external forces. The central model is then demonstrated in a broad historical overview of attitudinal incongruence in America. The central tenets of …

Underrepresented: Descriptive Representation And Political Interest Of African Americans And Women In The 2008 Election, Kristine K. Coulter, Jennifer R. Garcia, Christopher Stout

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

- 83 - Representing the Underrepresented: Descriptive Representation and Political Interest of African Americans and Women in the 2008 Election Kristine Coulter University of California, Irvine Jennifer R. Garcia University of California, Irvine Christopher T. Stout Southern Illinois University, Carbondale In this article, we examine the effect of the presidential candidacies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and the vice presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin on change in political interest among African Americans and women over the course of the 2008 election. We also examine the effects of these candidacies on intra-group characteristics in these marginalized groups. Consistent with the …

What We Should Have Known About The Black Vote: A Comprehensive Analysis Of Voter Turnout In Presidential Elections, Zulema T. Blair Phd

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

A historic increase in African American voter turnout in the 2008 presidential elections has also contributed to the overall increase in voter turnout in presidential elections, which steadily declined from 1960 through 2000. Using a logistic regression analysis for presidential years 1980 through 2000, this article re-examines why voter turnout in presidential election years take place. The traditional and well-established explanations of socioeconomic status (SES), demographics, group consciousness, mobilization, psychological orientations, and economic displacement, were regressed onto voter turnout where race is deemed insignificant. However, in a closer analysis where income was used to separate the voting age population by …

About Face: A Perspective On Civilian Military Relations Through The Lens Of The Principal-Agent Theory, Randall Swain

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

- 55 - About Face: A Perspective of Civil-Military Relations through the Lens of Principal-Agent Theory Randall D. Swain Eastern Kentucky University This essay uses the principal-agent theory to offer a framework for explaining shirking tendencies by the U.S. military in civil-military relations. Through the lens of the framework presented here, the principal-agent theory explains why shirking tendencies by the U.S. military is more likely to occur when a Republican occupies the White House, than when it is occupied by a Democrat. Besides providing a framework for conceptualizing civil-military relations, the importance of this work lies in the manner in …