Political Theory Commons^™

Equity In Coastal Resilience: A Framework For University Engagement In Community-Based Projects, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Jennifer L. Whytlaw, Marina Saitgalina, Ogechukwu N. Nwandu-Vincent, Khairul A. Anuar, Thomas Allen, Joshua Behr

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

As communities face intensifying climate hazards, it is vital to strengthen resilience in ways that explicitly prioritize social equity. This study examines how higher education institutions can better support government, nonprofit, and community partners in advancing equity-centered coastal resilience in the U.S. Utilizing a qualitative research design, we analyze discussions among researchers and practitioners during a three-day workshop. We present a framework derived from a thematic analysis of breakout group transcripts from a three-day national virtual workshop involving 113 researchers and practitioners. The analysis identified four core themes: the necessity of aligning projects with community-defined priorities; the foundational role of …

Nuclear Deterrence And The Security Dilemma In A Complex Multipolar World, Chick Edmond

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

Objectives: The purpose of this research project is to examine how nuclear deterrence intersects with the concept of security dilemma, i.e., when a state takes an action intended to increase its own security it may inadvertently create a risk or threat to another state and contribute to increased levels of tension. Fourth, how nuclear and conventional systems are becoming increasingly interconnected, which will serve to potentially amplify risks associated with these systems.

Methods: Utilizing a qualitative analytical approach of documents such as national strategy documents, defense policy statements and historical records of crises dating from 1945-2025, the study identifies four …

Simulating Social Attitudes With Llms: Accuracy, Demographic Effects, And Refusal Behavior In The Sensitive Domain Of Suicide Prevention, Cristina J. Perez, Michael P. Vasquez Jr., Philippe J. Giabbanelli, Patrick Y. Wu

VMASC Publications

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to simulate public opinion, yet their validity in sensitive policy domains remains underexplored. We evaluate whether LLMs can reproduce attitudes toward suicide prevention policies using 32 questions drawn from seven nationally representative U.S. surveys (2023-2025). We systematically vary demographic conditioning (race/ethnicity, gender, age, education, income, party), prompt framing (direct elicitation, respondent embodiment, specialist embodiment), and model architecture (GPT-5 Nano, DeepSeek V3.2, Meta Llama 3.1 8B, Mistral Small 24B). Across 811,560 prompts, the mean absolute error—the average gap between predicted and human response distributions—is 23 percentage points. We also find that LLM responses to …

How Operational And Disclosure Complexity Shapes The Conglomerate Discount, Feng Dong, John A. Doukas, Son Wilson, Rongyao Zhang

Finance Faculty Publications

This study examines how firm operational diversification and disclosure complexity jointly drive the conglomerate discount. We disentangle disclosure complexity, which is determined by managerially influenced financial transparency, from accounting complexity, which is a direct informational consequence of operational complexity. We find that operational diversification is consistently associated with significant conglomerate discounts, while disclosure complexity independently reduces firm value and amplifies the magnitude of the discount when diversification is high. These findings suggest that transparent disclosures can mitigate valuation costs, offering important implications for managers seeking effective communication, investors assessing complex firms, and policymakers aiming to enhance disclosure quality and market …

"Legitimacy, War, And The State: A Framework For Understanding Legitimation Strategies In Us Foreign Policy", Daniel Jose Palomino

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Do social norms play a role in policy maker’s foreign policy choices? What methods or strategies are effective in generating sustainable public support? In contrast to certain theories that conceive of international relations as purely divorced from social norms – be they international or domestic - I argue that the characteristic of legitimacy is critical to understanding how states construct and pursue their foreign policy. Using a methodology of historical review I examine four primary qualities of legitimation theory: Concern, Audience, Effort, and Reception; using the test case of the Americanization of the Vietnam War (1961-1965) this study will …

The Post-Millennial French Colonial Empire, Chase Plante

Graduate Research Conference (GSIS)

The French Colonial Empire of the Age of Imperialism was born in the apocalyptic fires of a millennial movement: the French Revolution of 1789. Millennial movements aspire to rapidly, often violently, achieve utopia by transforming their contexts. Revolutionary France went to war to liberate the world from tyranny and so began both French nationalism and the resurged French colonial empire. The crusade failed, but nationalism and imperial expansion remained. The French genuinely believed that, in their imperial and colonial expansion and domination, they were bringing the world closer to utopia. Assimilation, linguistic and cultural, was a key part of this. …

Upending The International Order: Russia’S War Against Ukraine, Chick Edmond

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shook the foundations of the global order. It exposed just how fragile international security, economic stability, and old geopolitical alliances really are in a tense self-help security environment. This analysis looks at how the conflict started, tracing it back to years of tension between Russia and NATO, especially around Ukraine’s desire to move closer to the West. The war has made it clear that international rules are only as strong as countries are willing to follow them, and that global organizations like the UN often fall short in preventing these wars as Russia ignored …

Challenges Of The Opposition In Cameroon Multipartism, Chick Edmond, Nkenglefack Dessailly Forku

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

The main goal of this study was to explore the challenges faced by Cameroon opposition political parties and how these challenges affect presidential electoral outcomes since 1990. We employed both qualitative and quantitative methods to collect data for the study. The research design was the case study design, and the sampling technique was nonprobability sampling (precisely purposeful sampling). We employed the constructivist research philosophy to show that reality resides in the different views of people. Consequently, it finds out that the opposition in Cameroon lacks credibility and vision to achieve victory in presidential elections. They also face challenges of suppression, …

Nato Persistence & The Iron Law Model, Ronald Okoye

Graduate Research Conference (GSIS)

The centrality of NATO to the progression of the war is one of the fundamental issues in the current Russia-Ukraine conflict. Analysts generally agree that Russia's motivations for starting the conflict stem from Ukraine’s ambitions to join NATO, as Moscow sees such a move as a flagrant encroachment of Western Europe onto its territory. Special scrutiny of NATO as a regional alliance and its ongoing stability that has survived the cold war is necessary in light of the developments in Ukraine. In order to justify the scientific study of NATO's persistence, one must consider the war vis-a-vis the Ukraine-NATO issue …

The Impact Of Climate Change On Environmental Sustainability And Human Mortality, Xingzhi Mara Chen, Andrew Sharma, Hua Liu

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

Climate dictates the critical aspects of human environmental conditions. The frequency and intensity of extreme weather conditions due to human-induced climate change have alarmingly increased. Consequently, climate change directly affects environmental sustainability and human mortality in the short term and creates prolonged and complicated long-term indirect grave risks. This paper examines three-level environmental impact risks associated with climate change on human mortality. It proposes a conceptual framework for developing an empirical event-based human mortality database related to climate change and communication strategies to enhance global environmental adaptation, resilience, and sustainability.

Conceptual Metaphor Usage In Glenn Youngkin’S 2021 Gubernatorial Campaign, Sara Rose Hotaling

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

In “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language,” Lakoff and Johnson suggest that conceptual metaphors pervade everyday language and produce the reality of our world. Conceptual metaphors act similarly within the occupational register of political campaigns in that they both support and construct a set of beliefs that become the reality of politicians, political parties, and constituents. In this language research, the conceptual metaphors employed by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin during his 2021 gubernatorial campaign were identified, analyzed, and categorized. The corpus of this research consists of two gubernatorial debates, three campaign speeches, and one television interview. An example of conceptual metaphor …

Keeping It Complex With Philip Hunton, John Locke, And The United States Federal Judiciary: On The Merit Of Murkiness In Separation Of Powers Jurisprudence, Michelle M. Kundmueller

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

This article draws on the resources of a little-known political theorist, Philip Hunton, to explain the function of “murky” jurisprudence in the maintenance of separation of powers over time. In the era immediately before the drafting of the United States Constitution, separation of powers was a touted remedy to tyranny. But if government is thus moderated, a critical question arises: who will judge the precise contours of each institution’s powers? This article addresses this longstanding question by comparing the solutions offered by Philip Hunton, John Locke, and the United States judiciary. I conclude that the judiciary’s decried inability to clarify …

Victory By The Weakest: Effects Of Negative Advertising In N>2 Candidate Campaigns, Jesse T. Richman

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

The truel, or three way duel, has distinct properties from duels: the weakest contestant often has a very good chance to win. This paper explores application of the logic of truels to election campaigns involving negative advertising. We show that negative campaigning that pits the leading candidates against each other can create circumstances in which the third (or worse) place candidate wins in one or more of the Nash equilibria of the game. We then study whether the simulated existence of an opportunity for Nash equilibrium victory by third place candidates predicts such outcomes in U.S. state-wide elections.

The Morning Meeting: Fostering A Participatory Democracy Begins With Youth In Public Education, Rebecca C. Tilhou

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

There is a faltering sense of democracy in America's current political climate due to polarized opinions about leadership's decisions and antagonistic political parties. John Dewey (1916) proposed that education is the place to foster democracy, as schools can provide a platform to actively engage students in authentic democratic experiences that will empower them to act democratically beyond the walls of the school. The democratic schools that emerged during the Free School Movement of the 1960s and 1970s embody Dewey's philosophy, specifically with the shared governance occurring in their School Meetings. Unfortunately, American public education's present preoccupation with standardization, proficiency scores, …

The Mortality Response To Absolute And Relative Temperature Extremes, Scott C. Sheridan, Cameron C. Lee, Michael J. Allen

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

While the impact of absolute extreme temperatures on human health has been amply studied, far less attention has been given to relative temperature extremes, that is, events that are highly unusual for the time of year but not necessarily extreme relative to a location's overall climate. In this research, we use a recently defined extreme temperature event metric to define absolute extreme heat events (EHE) and extreme cold events (ECE) using absolute thresholds, and relative extreme heat events (REHE) and relative extreme cold events (RECE) using relative thresholds. All-cause mortality outcomes using a distributed lag nonlinear model are evaluated for …

Corruption May Worsen In Democratizing Economies: But Don't Let It Erode Our Faith In Democracy, Shaomin Li, Ilan Alon, Jun Wu

Management Faculty Publications

This commentary is based on a recent study we conducted on the relationship between regime type, corruption, and economic development. We build a theory that links corruption and regime type to economic growth and test it on 158 countries, using multiple databases including Polity IV, transparency international, the World Bank, and others. We first distinguish three regime types, autocracy (dictatorship), anocracy (countries in early stage of democratization), and mature democracy. We found that when autocratic countries begin democratize, corruption usually gets worse. As the infant democracies mature, corruption decreases.

Assessment Of And Outlook On China's Corruption And Anticorruption Campaigns: Stagnation In The Authoritarian Trap, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

Since the beginning of China's economic reform in the late 1970s, corruption has been progressing alongside of economic growth. In 2012, when Xi Jinping took power, he waged the largest and longest anticorruption campaign known in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. This study provides an assessment on his campaign and projects an outlook on the future of corruption and anticorruption in China. The author argues that China will enter into an "authoritarian trap," in which the authoritarian power enables the state to effectively carry out the economic reform and achieve economic growth, while suppressing the demand for the …

From Heresy To Policy: My Prescription For China's Population Policy 25 Years Ago, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

Recently scholars have been calling for the loosening up of China's one-child policy, and even the Chinese government has begun to show some willingness to do so. The call is not new. In my doctoral dissertation 25 years ago I first showed that China should allow couples to have two children and could still achieve the same population control goal as the one-child policy. I am glad to see that what I proposed 25 years ago is repeated by many scholars and even acceptable to the Chinese government.

The Inevitable And Difficult Transition From Relation-Based To Rule-Based Governance In China, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

China has benefited tremendously from replying on the relation-based way of doing business and governance, as evidenced in its rapid economic growth up to now. However, further relying on the relation-based governance may eventually hinder China's economic growth and exacerbate inequality, resulting in political instability. On the other hand, given China's cultural heritage and powerful vested interest groups, can China shed its relation-based way? This article argues from logical, theoretical, and empirical perspectives the inevitability and difficulty of China's transition from relations to rules, and discuss the implications of the transition or the lack of it for China.

Nuclear Security Complexes: An Alternative Approach To Nuclear Nonproliferation, Beyza Unal

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Existing literature examines nuclear proliferation from a regional or a national perspective but nuclear issues are inherently transnational. The literature also often focuses on single-state policies for deterrence purposes. Following tailored (single-state) policies, however, is too narrow because these policies are bilateral and based on national interest; they do not include global concerns. In response to the literature, this dissertation proposes to examine states grouped according to their state characteristics in terms of threat existence, democracy level in the nuclear field, and membership in nuclear organizations and compliance with major nuclear treaties. The focus here is to ask: "Does regional …

Pcf: Voice Of The People, Raisa Vilensky

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The French Communist Party (PCF) played an instrumental role in giving a voice to a segment of the population that was otherwise poorly represented in democracy. This paper attempts to illustrate the origins of communism in France by drawing on French history to connect a unique and separate branch of thought, beginning with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. From Rousseau's ideals on the evil of private property and his disdain for the rule of law being merely a tool to support the existing ruling class, through the Jacobins of the French Revolution, and continued by the French Socialists of the Nineteenth Century, it …

Democratic Failure: Tracking The Ebb Of Democracy's Flow, 1800–2006, Sanja E. Sray

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Scant attention has focused on the systematic study of democratic failure. This dissertation partially corrects this oversight. Tracing the roots of antidemocratic sentiment across the centuries, it first argues that the advance of institutions, fueled by underlying shifts in values and innovation in political philosophy, was key to freeing democracy from its bondage as a most disparaged form of governance. Focusing on the measurable aspects of these institutions, the study focuses on describing patterns of behavior when democracies fail. First, it shows that there have been clusters of democratic failure. These clusters, or counterwaves, find their roots in ancient antidemocratic …

Theorizing Threat: An Investigation Of Contentious Embodiment, Jennifer Musial, Emily Van Der Meulen

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In early summer 2006, we had a phone conversation that generated interest in this topic. Emily was reminiscing about her experiences at the Washington, D.C. March for Women's Lives in April of 2004. The March, a demonstration for reproductive justice, brought out feminists and anti-abortion protestors alike. Emily remembered seeing African-American men holding signs that equated abortion to the airplane attacks in New York City on September 11, 2001. This sparked curiosity: how does abortion become equated with "terrorism"? [1] One answer to this question is that a woman who has an abortion is said to commit "body-terrorism" …

On David Roochnik's Beautiful City: The Dialectical Character Of Plato’S Republic, James Ambury

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

“Despite appearances to the contrary, especially passages from Book 8, the Republic actually offers a qualified and cautious defense, rather than a resounding condemnation, of democracy. This defense, however, is specifically dialectical” (2). Thus begins David Roochnik’s short but intriguing study of Plato’s Republic, a dialogue long regarded as evidence that Plato was an enemy of democracy. While Socrates adamantly condemns both democracy and the democratic man, Roochnik argues that the Republic as a work is dialectical in character, and only viewed as such can we come to truly grip Plato’s intention when composing it. The Republic, so …

Cold War Games And Postwar Art, Claudia Mesch

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

During the Cold War both “superpowers” used games, particularly chess, in order to construct an ideology of complete conflict and irreconcilable division between East and West. This essay focuses on the broad cultural challenge to divisive Cold War zero-sum mentality issued by a number of artists—André Breton, Marcel Duchamp and Öyvind Fahlström, and Fluxus artists George Maciunas, George Brecht, Robert Watts, Takako Saito and Yoko Ono. These artists, in a second wave of game-focused art, returned to the concerns of surrealist art practice and to earlier cultural game theory. Even conceptual art production was impacted by the predetermined structure of …

On Cadava And Levy's Cities Without Citizens, Matthew Wolf-Meyer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

What, the editors of this collection ask in their introduction, is the nature of the relationship between cities and the people who inhabit them? And how do the historical situation of cities and their citizens limit the potentiality of new modes of subjectification? These are surely evocative questions, and as the editors remark, increasingly necessary ones, as the city is quickly becoming the organizing principle for global flows (of bodies, capital, law, etc.), but, in the collection that follows, the contributing authors barely scratch the surface of these issues, nor do they properly problematize such latter-day master narratives …

Grand Strategy Analysis: A Proto-Theoretical Approach, Patrick Magee

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

International relations scholarship begins and ends with assumptions—about human nature; about human interaction; about starting points, relative information, and outcomes. Such assumptions are necessary to further the intellectual coherence and development of scholarly work. However, they restrict the applicability of scholarly research to those situations that parallel the work's underlying assumptions.

This work argues the body of international relations scholarship as a whole would benefit from the development of a pre-theory state, absent any assumptions about international relations, from which observers can identify those works of scholarship that are most effective in explaining perceptive states and the strategic decisions taken …

Portals To Knowledge: Confluence And Conflict Between Enlightenment And Postmodern Currencies, Benjamin G. Lanier-Nabors

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

In order to provide any viable critique of twenty-first-century discourses -- whether signified by late capitalism, epistemological hegemony, cultural domination, or globalization (the catch-word for all of these) -- one must not employ an ahistorical or static lens; alternatively, one must dredge up and analyze the sediments that underlie current discourses, and many of these sediments are found in the eighteenth century. More specifically, by reading the thoughts of such writers as Joseph Addison and Jonathan Swift, one is forced to read the links and antipathies between the discursive economies of epistemology -- philosophical, scientific, and economic -- …

Review Of Jennifer Government, By Berry Max, David Banash

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Solutions/Fixations: A Transformation, Davin Heckman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First two paragraphs]

As I write from the heartland, in a small rural town in Northwest Ohio, the world, with the help of my government, is undergoing a process of reorganization.

This has been going on for some time. Media and its various material incarnations have stumbled around the world and back, layering it with new meanings, creating new sites of production. Rays of feedback, echoes, have coated the world with a many-layered web of meaning.