American Politics Commons^™

U.S. Democratization In Post-Cold War Russia: A Critique, Franklin T. Hughes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

States are path dependent entities that deviate solely in the face of catastrophic failures in the pursuit of axiomatic ends by conventional means. The inertia of bureaucratic institutions, a foreign policy consensus within a self-reproducing elite of experts, the self-interest of political elites and a sense of “national self” or identity lead states to understand themselves in light of a history and a relative level of status on the world stage. Since the end World War II, the U.S. has a certain path that places the spread of democracy and laissez-faire capitalism extremely important if not vital foreign policy goals. …

Clearing The Field: How Do Presidential Primary Candidates Win Big On Super Tuesday?, Colin D. Swearingen

2020 Faculty Bibliography

In presidential primaries, Super Tuesday elections play a significant role in winnowing candidate fields and establishing nomination frontrunners. Despite their importance, scholars know little about why and how candidates win or lose the states comprising these events. This study explores which factors help explain candidate performance in Super Tuesday primaries between 2008 and 2016. Using pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis, the results indicate three key drivers of Super Tuesday success: candidate viability, public attention, and media attention. These findings imply that presidential campaigns continue to be complex electoral events beyond the early primary states and suggest that underdog candidates can still …

Untitled, Michayla George

Debate Essay Winners

2nd Place Winner - High School Division

Michayla George

Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet High School

Geographic And Partisan Patterns Of Support For Electoral Reforms, Aubrey Kelley

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Electoral reform has become a hotly debated issue, and it has recently been in the news at federal and state levels. On the federal level, the House of Representatives recently passed an electoral reform bill to expand early voting and allow for same-day voter registration. On the state level, Kentucky has become one of the most recent states to implement photo identification requirements. Georgia’s strict voter registration system became a subject of deep controversy during the most recent gubernatorial election. Throughout the past couple of decades, electoral reform has been tackled in a variety of different ways; some states have …

Factors Contributing To Continuing Democratic Victories In Some Southern House Districts, 1994–2008, Dillon Mccormick

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The American South went through a period of political transition in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This transition reached its climax after the 1994 elections, after which Democrats ceased to hold the majority of House seats in the South, never to regain that strength. However, Democrats continued to win a decent share of House seats in the South after 1994, with about 40% of Southern House seats being won by Democrats until the 2010 elections, after which Democrats shrunk to a much smaller minority.

This paper analyzes the factors that allowed some Democrats to continue to be elected …

"Family Values Don't Stop At The Rio Grande..." : Can The Republican Party Convert Hispanic Voters?, Donald Davison

Faculty Publications

As the Hispanic community becomes increasingly important in American politics there are competing views about whether they can be converted to the Republican Party. One perspective argues that Hispanics’ religion and traditional social values makes them natural constituents of the Republican Party. Alternatively, Hispanics are primarily concerned about issues promoting their well-being, while topics such as moral values or religion are private. I use a novel approach to test whether traditional social values might attract Hispanic voters to the Republican Party. Using exit poll results for ballot propositions on moral issues from Arizona, Colorado, and Florida I find weak evidence …

Untitled, Atticus Mosser

Debate Essay Winners

3rd Place Winner - Middle School Division

Atticus Mosser

West End Middle School

In Opposition Of The Electoral College, Sadia Bolduc

Debate Essay Winners

3rd Place Winner - High School Division

Saida Bolduc

Martin Luther King, Jr. Magnet High School

How News Media Coverage Of Crises Promotes Conspiracy Beliefs, Richard L Kornrumpf

Undergraduate Arts and Research Showcase

While scholars of conspiracy theories have recently made great strides in understanding the basic nature and correlates of conspiratorial thinking, we still know little about how conspiracy beliefs are disseminated and communicated, especially when it comes to traditional media. Here we use a unique experiment to investigate whether media coverage of mass shootings – complete with the uncertainty, conflicting reports, and dubious official narratives that characterize such coverage – provides the raw material for conspiracy theories and promotes conspiracy beliefs among viewers. We find that implicit conspiratorial information – that which causes confusion and foments uncertainty – does not enflame …

A State Divided: The Reality Of Education In Maine, Gabrielle Raymond

Honors Program Theses

In Maine there is a lack of a comprehensive policy that allows and facilitates an equal education for all students no matter where they go to school. In order to research what is driving this inequality a specific policy was selected to use as the case study. The policy selected was proficiency-based learning. This policy was enacted in 2012 which makes it the most recent comprehensive education policy passed in Maine. In addition, this policy mandated similar concepts as past policy, so it was able to illustrate the trends in Maine’s education policy. In order to understand what effects education …

“And Some, I Assume, Are Good People:” Examining The Impact Of Donald Trump’S Presidency On The Lived Experiences Of Latinx Teens, Mary Vickers

Honors Program Theses

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. […] They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people” (Time Magazine 2015). This quote from Donald Trump has become emblematic of the President’s attitude towards immigrants. Since the 2016 campaign trail, Trump has spread harmful narratives about Latinx immigrants, and his words have tangible impacts on local communities. In this thesis, I use the framework of triadic right-wing populism to analyze how President Trump characterizes Latinx immigrants as …

Gender Diversity, Women’S Leadership, And Consensus In State Supreme Courts, Meghan E. Leonard, Joseph V. Ross

Faculty Publications – Politics and Government

In this article, we argue that the leadership of women as chief justice or the majority opinion author, as well as an increased presence of women on the panel, should increase the likelihood of unanimous decisions and the size of majority coalitions in state supreme courts. Using an original dataset of cases in three policy areas from all state supreme courts from 1990-2015, we uncover some surprising results. In some issue areas, majority coalitions are larger when a woman serves as the majority opinion author, though we see smaller coalitions when more women are on the court and a man …

Anna Julia Cooper: Radical Relationality And The Ethics Of Interdependence, Carol Wayne White

Faculty Contributions to Books

In her range of activities as orator, scholar, community activist, and educator, Anna Julia Cooper demonstrates a basic orientation toward life that paradigmatically exemplifies a proto-feminist politics based in intersectional analysis. Addressing problematic gendered, racialized, and class power dynamics in various institutions, Cooper sought a readjustment of relationships among all Americans that would ensure the dignity and worth of each individual. A close reading of her corpus also shows Cooper consistently identifying principles that advanced nuanced approaches to justice, freedom, and equality. In this chapter, I propose that Cooper’s mature intellectual vision demonstrates a particular vision of a transformed America, …

2020 Virginia House Of Delegates: Demographics And Voting Behavior, Nathan Tatum

Student Publications

The focus of this project is on the demographic makeup of the 2020 Virginia House of Delegates, and how various demographic factors - political affiliation, gender/sex, race, religious affiliation, education level, and age - may influence their voting behavior on different legislation. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part explains the measures and methodology used in the creation of the dataset. The second and third parts make use of the information collected in the dataset. The second part details the demographic makeup of the 2020 Va. House and compares the makeup of the House to the makeup …

From Hobbes To Habermas: The Anti-Cultural Turn In Western Political Thought, Ralph Gert Schoellhammer

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

The theme of this dissertation is the anti-cultural turn of Western Political Thought that has emerged out of Enlightenment thinking and was first turned into a comprehensive political idea by Thomas Hobbes.

Beginning with an overview of psychological research into the phenomenon of culture I put forward the argument that human beings are by nature social and individualistic, but that they oscillate between their ability to put group-interests before individual interests and vice versa. Culture is the main mechanism that influences which interest we give priority. This mechanism work through emotional attachments that create intuitions about what is morally right …

Judicial Elections, Public Opinion, And Their Impact On State Criminal Justice Policy, Travis N. Taylor

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

This dissertation explores whether and how the re-election prospects faced by trial court judges in many American states influence criminal justice policy, specifically, state levels of incarceration, as well as the disparity in rates of incarceration for Whites and Blacks. Do states where trial court judges must worry about facing reelection tend to encourage judicial behavior that results in higher incarceration rates? And are levels of incarceration and racial disparities in the states influenced by the proportion of the state publics who want more punitive policies? These are clearly important questions because they speak directly to several normative and empirical …

Sriram (2020) - White Nationalism.Pdf, Shyam Sriram

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

No abstract provided.

Belmont Presidential Debate Essay, Mary Li

Debate Essay Winners

2nd Place Winner- Middle School Division

Mary Li

Martin Luther King, Jr. Magnet School

United States Department Of Defense Acquisition Of Leading-Edge Information Technology Services And The Impact Of Public Market Research On Efficiency And Effectiveness, Thomas Denning

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

This dissertation examines the acquisition of leading-edge IT services (LEITS), like those associated with cyber, agile software development, and cloud migration. In an effort to build on previous research, the purpose of this dissertation is twofold: to examine how Public Market Research impacts the LEITS acquisition process in the DoD and to discover strengths and value-added components that exist in the current government acquisition process leading to greater efficiency and effectiveness. Through a mixed methods approach, this dissertation provides recommendations for how to conduct the most efficient and effective LEITS acquisitions, striving to maximize a constrained budget, minimize time to …

Catholicism And Politics In A Fallen World: Understanding Human Imperfection As Relates To Political Institutions, George J. Doyle

CSB and SJU Distinguished Thesis

This thesis is composed of two primary parts, each involving discussion of Catholicism and political life. Part I critiques Thomas Aquinas’ theory of government in light of his theory of nature, with an emphasis on original sin as a defining attribute of the human person. The section concludes with an argument in favor of democracy rooted in Aquinas’s theory of human nature, as well as an understanding of the role of the Catholic Church in light of the claims made in this part of the thesis. Part II contains a political science study assessing factors that contribute to party identification …