American Politics Commons^™

Fmus 2020 Trump Executive Order Research, Grace Christodoss, Kaleb Sena

Celebration of Scholarship 2021

President Donald J. Trump's presidency has been one of high critique as well as high praise for his "unprecedented" approach to governing. Both sides looking more towards his character as the reason for this "uniqueness" rather than to finite means of measurement. We took a statistically in-depth look into President Trump's governing style to determine if it could be factually proven that his unique governing style is truly different from that of past Presidents. We did this specifically through the lens of executive orders. We will search public databases and review historical models to see whether or not Trump's use …

Historical Hindsight And The Media In Critical Elections, Jacob Scobee

Undergraduate Theses

This thesis will aim to investigate the topics of critical elections and why we view them as such. It aims to closely examine two key elections, the 1964 election won by a Democrat, and the 1980 election won by a Republican, researching both the historical context of these elections that may have led them to become critical, and whether the way in which the elections were covered may provide any insight. To do this the editorial section of three newspapers, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and LA Times, will be examined to see if rhetoric varied at all between …

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 …

Mayor Pete, Obergefell Gays, And White Male Privilege, Russell K. Robinson

Buffalo Law Review

This Article argues that Mayor Pete Buttigieg seized the national imagination and a substantial number of Democratic delegates through the combination of his gay identity and his alignment with masculinity norms generally assigned to heterosexual men, and by taking aim at more senior and qualified women candidates, namely Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. Buttigieg’s unprecedented success suggests that some White gay men now enjoy a unique pathway to reclaiming their status as men and asserting White male privilege. In short, contrary to pervasive media claims, Buttigieg’s success should be read as a breakthrough for certain White gay men, but …

A Comparative Analysis Of Distribution And Allocation Of Covid-19 Vaccines Between Two Administrations, Leila Halawi, J. Mayanja, J. Chilipamushi, Y. Zhang, B Albury, Jude Edwards

Publications

The pandemic of COVID-19 is a life-threatening disease that entailed all governments but especially the U.S government, to quickly prevent methods of spreading the virus while strategically putting in place a plan for biological testing for a vaccine for immunity. The purpose was to determine how effective the formulation of a COVID-19 vaccine and the distribution would impact the mortality with efficacy rates. Besides, this research paper underlines the principles for ethical and equitable distribution for mass immunization. A comparative analysis between the Trump Administration and the Biden Administration will be presented regarding the funding stream, distribution of vaccinations, and …

Redefining Affordable Housing In Ma, Maria Fernanda De La Fuente Martinez

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Housing is considered affordable if it costs 30% or less of a household’s income, and “is deed-restricted to income-eligible low- or moderate-income residents” (MAPC, n.d.). According to the Joint Center of Housing Studies (JCHS), as of 2017, 31.5% of all American households were considered cost-burdened by rent, meaning they spent more than 30% of their income on rent. That same year, the percentage of severely cost-burdened households (those who spent over 50% of their income in rent) was 15.2%. This means that almost half of all Americans struggled to pay rent in 2017 (Veal & Spader, 2018).

Institute For Public Policy National Poll - April 2021, Institute For Public Policy

Public Policy Poll Results

The Sacred Heart University Institute for Public Policy leveraged a dual-methodology quantitative research approach to address the following areas of investigation:

• Thoughts on the quality of life in Connecticut
• Governor Ned Lamont’s job approval ratings
• Sentiment regarding the legalization of Marijuana
• Thoughts on COVID-19 and distribution of the vaccine
• Thoughts on public health insurance in Connecticut
• Thoughts on current Connecticut state-funded pensions
• Demographic profiles of respondents

Aiming To Misfire: Intentional Bias And Its Relationship With Polling Error, Tyler Redmon

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

With growing public dissatisfaction with election polling, finding the source of polling error is key to resolving common frustrations. Many things have been blamed for recent polling misses but the method by which polls are conducted deserved a closer look. This paper seeks to find that source of error through polling conducted in the 2020 Presidential election. This paper shows that polling error at the national level can be attributed to intentional bias but there remain questions when it comes to state polling.

The New Open Forum: Social Media Use In Georgia Gubernatorial Elections, John Mack

Honors College Theses

In 2018, Georgia saw one of the most contested elections in recent memory with Brian Kemp narrowly defeating Stacey Abrams. As a part of that election, social media would play a critical role in how campaigns are run. This thesis takes a look at previous literature on voter turnout and social media. This thesis asks: How did the campaigns use social media to spread their message, and in what stage of the election was social media most effective? To answer that question this thesis features a content analysis of Facebook posts and Tweets from the 2018 elections compared to posts …

Why Deteriorating Relations, Xenophobia, And Safety Concerns Will Deter Chinese International Student Mobility To The United States, Ryan M. Allen, Ying Ye

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Collaborations between American and Chinese universities have been critical to global knowledge production. Chinese students accounted for over a third of all international students in the United States prior to COVID-19, but the pandemic paused most global mobility in 2020. We argue that this international mobility to the United States will not fully recover if larger stressors are left unaddressed. First, relations between the United States and China have deteriorated in recent years, especially under the Trump administration, with growing suspicion against Chinese researchers and scholars. Second, viral acts of violence and anti-Asian incidents have painted the United States as …

Guns And Their Place In The Us, Jacob Garibaldi

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

Creating this paper was a wicked problem due to how deep of an issue the gun debate is in the United States. In the discussion of guns, there is a side that wants to abolish them, a side that believes in the right of the second amendment, and a middle ground where we can have guns in society with added in legal measures. Surely enough, those that are in opposition to firearms are persuaded due to the acts of violence and crime committed with them. Then there are those that use them in a way of self-defense. Through this paper, …

Do Autocratic Regimes Excel In Natural Disaster Relief? A Case Study Of Political Institutions And Covid-19 Exposure, Jane Kay

Honors Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has challenged what we know about the politics of public health. In this research study, I investigate the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural disaster and hypothesize if authoritarian governments are more adequate at disaster control and relief. I hypothesize that the more autocratic a government structure, the better they would be at handling COVID-19 exposure and outbreaks due to their centralized decision making, unified media, and their ability to make unpopular decisions without repercussions. In order to test this theory, I gather data from the Johns Hopkins database for three key dates in the pandemic …

Examining The Rise In Asian-American Hate Crimes, Onu Institute For Civics And Public Policy, Kennedy Aikey, Kennedy Cook, Hailey Trimpey

Critical Questions

In the past year, hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans in the United States have increased by nearly 150 percent. Many have linked this rise to charged rhetoric revolving around the CoronaVirus pandemic and its origins in Wuhan China. The use of terms like “Chinese virus” and “kung flu” have been used as derogatory ways to blame Asians for the virus. Asian- Americans in various communities are now becoming targets for hate crimes. Recently, many are trying to speak out against this and bring an end to the hate. Racism has surrounded these communities for years now, and it has gotten progressively …

A Study Of Undergraduate Major On The Youth Electorate Within The Bryant Community, Jenna Birnbohm-Kaminski

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

This thesis will carefully explore the relationship between undergraduate college major, and political participation and affiliation of young voters (ages 18-29). There has been a great deal of research in the field of voter behavior about this generation of young voters, and how they will impact the new electorate and overall political climate. An increasing commonality amongst young people is an undergraduate education of some kind. However, undergraduate students can choose their area of study, thus differentiating the exposure to information and experience of each student at a very impressionable time in their lives. A study of the political behavior …

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 …

Global Studies Initiative Faculty Report: Interdisciplinary Collaborations, Dale Gardner

Global Studies Initiatives in Social Sciences 2020 - 2021

No abstract provided.

A Study Of Groupthink And Multiple Advocacy In Presidential Foreign Policy Fiascos, Ethan S. Wilt

Student Publications

As “the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations,” Presidents have almost exclusively presided over foreign policy. Modern Presidents, spanning from Eisenhower, Kennedy, Ford, Carter, and Reagan, have readily encountered foreign policy crises, with varying degrees of success. Why do some President fail while others triumph? It comes down to an assortment of factors: organizational structure, multiple advocacy, and groupthink. Organizational structure affects how information is disseminated and decisions are made. Multiple advocacy brings out all important interests during deliberations. Groupthink paralyzes deliberations by causing conformity, cohesion, and replaces critical thinking with irrationality. These frameworks …

Polarization: A 21st Century Challenge To Global Democracy, Tim Biocic

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The purpose of this paper is to identify the issue of political polarization as it relates not only to American politics, but also to see how the issues in political polarization that exist in the United States are also experienced in other democracies around the world. The paper takes a look at what some of the different theories are about where polarization originates, who some of the leading scholars are in the debate over polarization, what institutional mechanisms contribute to the problem of polarization, and then finally what polarization looks like elsewhere in the world.

When it comes to the …

Catholic Voting: The Influence Of Abortion, Benjamin O’Brien

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Throughout the history of the United States, voting trends in American elections have evolved. One example of this is how the Catholic vote has changed since the 1960s. Factors such as race, gender, economics, and religious values may impact voting trends. These factors may have some impact on the shift in the Catholic voting trend. To determine this, I studied how Catholic voters feel about certain issues and how their responses may differ by income level, race, and gender. In my analysis I used data from the Congressional Campaign Election Study, which was gathered by a survey of voters in …

Partisan Trust In Social Media: Who Trusts The News On Social Media And Who Does Not?, Kenneth Morris

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Social Media has changed the way Americans and people around the world receive their news. This advancement in media has political scientists questioning who trusts the information they read on social media sites. The PEW Research Center provides excellent data from a public opinion survey they conducted in 2019. My analysis of the data found that found that the older generations (50 years and older) are more warry of the news they receive on social media. More specifically, the older Republicans have less trust than the other demographics. With President Trump’s Twitter account being permanently banned from the site in …