Models and Methods Commons^™

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 …

Spatial Tools For Case Selection: Using Lisa Statistics To Design Mixed-Methods Research, Matthew C. Ingram, Imke Harbers

Political Science Faculty Scholarship

Mixed-methods designs, especially those in which case selection is regression-based, have become popular across the social sciences. In this paper, we highlight why tools from spatial analysis—which have largely been overlooked in the mixed-methods literature—can be used for case selection and be particularly fruitful for theory development. We discuss two tools for integrating quantitative and qualitative analysis: (1) spatial autocorrelation in the outcome of interest; and (2) spatial autocorrelation in the residuals of a regression model. The case selection strategies presented here enable scholars to systematically use geography to learn more about their data and select cases that help identify …

How Does Media Coverage Of Oil Pipelines Affect Governmental Response?, Haley Walter

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This study’s purpose was to first explore the significance of agenda-setting, framing, and inference, which assert that the media’s daily coverage of event significant impact the way it is understood by the public. Then, I aimed to apply this understanding specifically to media coverage of the oil pipeline process of Dakota Access Pipeline.

To this end, I conducted a content analysis of articles from The Bismarck Tribune, the Associated Press, The New York Timesand The Wall Street Journal between January 1^st, 2015 and January 1^st, 2016, and July 25^th, 2016 and October …

Predicting Leader Survival: Evidence From Covert Action Case Study Analysis, Joy S. Patton

Dissertations

This research explores the unique relationship between covert action and leader survivability, in particular, how leadership styles and personality traits influence this relationship. The life of a ruler is ephemeral. For those who are lucky, their exit from office is through retirement or old age. For most, their tenure is short, often ending through violent means. The overthrow of rulers by their rivals is a common theme throughout world history, and the strategy remains a popular choice in contemporary warfare. However, despite the frequency of regime change, very little is discussed in international relations about covert regime change and its …

Syrian Crisis Representation In The Media: The Cnn Effect, Framing, And Tone, Savannah S. Day

Venture: The University of Mississippi Undergraduate Research Journal

Over the past seven years of the Syrian Civil War, Syrian refugees have been painted in a negative light by news media outlets around the world. History of media coverage regarding global humanitarian crises shows that with various tools and processes, media can shape public opinion and policy in whichever direction it desires, and oftentimes policymakers and the public are quick, as well as emotional, to react. In this paper, my objectives are to analyze specific examples of this CNN Effect phenomena within news coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis, as well as generally explain the negatively correlating relationship between …

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 …

Disillusioning The Illusion Of Choice: A Rogerian Approach On Electoral College Reform, Mei Lin

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

The Electoral College is used by the United States of America to elect the president every four years. It has been amended and updated several times; however, it remains an extremely convoluted and outdated system. Four presidencies were the product of incongruent elections –– the candidate won the electoral college but lost the popular vote –– and each of these presidencies resulted in immense consequences. Reforming the current electoral college will be difficult, but it is extremely vital and necessary. The American election system must be restructured so that it may fairly and adequately represent the voices of its citizens.

Evaluating Sebastian Rosato's Balance Of Power Theory: A Case Study In The Collapse Of Europe's Great Experiment, Tyler Soutendijk

Swarthmore International Relations Journal

No abstract provided.

The Messy Nuclear Landscape: Using Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping To Explore Plausible Nuclear Disarmament Scenarios, Ryan M. Nixon

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Nuclear weapons are seemingly permanent fixtures in international relations. Although nuclear abolitionists and actors within the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have taken significant steps towards designing a world without nuclear weapons, the longstanding realist logic that suggests nuclear disarmament is nonviable has born more fruit. On the other hand, some proponents of realism have suggested global nuclear disarmament is feasible, given that certain international instabilities are stabilized and that special care is taken during diplomatic negotiations. This presents an opportunity to test these predictions using fuzzy cognitive mapping, a computational modeling technique that identifies …

Puzzling Together: Avenues For Applying Motivational Interviewing To The Transformation Of Intractable, Intergroup Conflict (U.S. Context)., Brian Chevalier

Capstone Collection

This paper explores the current state of political left/right division in the United States and explores the use of Motivational Interviewing in “unfreezing” the two sides of this intractable conflict. The author interviewed four people (two conservatives and two liberals) as well as surveyed over one hundred and fifty respondents in an online survey exploring this theme. While the two sides differ in many ways, the evidence seems to show that both sides overwhelmingly admit that there is a problem, that both sides must get better, and that communication would be easier if both sides practiced more reflective listening. This …

Measuring And Explaining Political Sophistication Through Textual Complexity, Kenneth Benoit, Kevin Munger, Arthur Spirling

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Political scientists lack domain-specific measures for the purpose of measuring the sophistication of political communication. We systematically review the shortcomings of existing approaches, before developing a new and better method along with software tools to apply it. We use crowdsourcing to perform thousands of pairwise comparisons of text snippets and incorporate these results into a statistical model of sophistication. This includes previously excluded features such as parts of speech and a measure of word rarity derived from dynamic term frequencies in the Google Books data set. Our technique not only shows which features are appropriate to the political domain and …

Newsworthy Migrants: Sentiment And Text Analysis Of Dutch Newspapers, Nicholas J. Schmitz

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Understanding how a migrant population is viewed and displayed by the host country has been a struggle for a long period of time for anyone studying migration. Traditional methods of collecting information were tedious, time intensive and expensive. However, Big data has been providing unique solutions to gaps in information in many different fields across the world. Media plays an important part in developing and assessing the public opinion on a topic. With the availability of a large number of online articles from historical time periods, it is possible to use quantitative analysis, such as text analytics, to can see …

Given Today's New Wave Of Protectionsim, Is Antitrust Law The Last Hope For Preserving A Free Global Economy Or Another Nail In Free Trade's Coffin?, Allison Murray

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Perception Of Corrupt Acts: East Vs. West, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Corruption is a major threat faced by China and anyone who wants to do business in the country. In recent years, the Chinese government’s crackdowns in corruption has led to some success. In the Berlin-based non-profit Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2017, China ranked 77th with a score of 41 out of 100, a slight improvement from the score of 36 in 2014. The index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople with a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.

Making Your Vote Worth More: The Impact Of Electoral Rules On Voters' Behaviors In Ireland, The Netherlands, And The U.S., Skylar Knight

Honors Program Theses

This research examines the impact of electoral rules on voters’ behaviors. More specifically, how do majoritarian and proportional electoral arrangements influence citizens’ efficacy, knowledge, and sophistication levels and how, in turn, do they affect voter turnout in Ireland, the Netherlands, and the U.S.? It is hypothesized that typical predictors of political participation (e.g. educational attainment, partisanship, etc.) are more significant in the U.S. because majoritarian electoral arrangements impose greater informational costs and offer fewer participatory incentives. Conducting multivariate regression analysis with data from The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), I conclude that electoral systems do indeed impact voters’ behaviors …

Electoral Dysfunction: Assessing State Electoral Laws And Turnout In Presidential Elections, Ellie S. Krossa

Honors Theses

Due to the United States’ shockingly low turnout in comparison to other Western democracies, many states around the country have enacted laws to increase the number of people who participate in presidential elections. Scholars have found mixed results when testing the effects of specific electoral reforms in individual states, but few have looked at comprehensive models to test the overall effects of these reforms on turnout. This thesis examines the ways in which electoral reforms across all fifty states have led to increases or decreases of turnout in presidential elections. It utilizes a comprehensive longitudinal model accounting for electoral reform …

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 …

The New Oral Argument: Justices As Advocates, Tonja Jacobi, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

This Article conducts a comprehensive empirical inquiry of fifty-five years of Supreme Court oral argument, showing that judicial activity has increased dramatically, in terms of words used, duration of speech, interruptions made, and comments proffered. The Court is asking no more questions of advocates; instead, the justices are providing conclusions and rebutting their colleagues. In addition, the justices direct more of their comments and questions to the side with whom they ultimately disagree. Furthermore, “losing” justices, be it ideological camps that are outnumbered on the Court or dissenters in specific cases, use oral arguments to push back against the dominant …

Taking Laughter Seriously At The Supreme Court, Tonja Jacobi, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

Laughter in Supreme Court oral arguments has been misunderstood, treated as either a lighthearted distraction from the Court’s serious work, or interpreted as an equalizing force in an otherwise hierarchical environment. Examining the more than nine thousand instances of laughter witnessed at the Court since 1955, this Article shows that the Justices of the Supreme Court use courtroom humor as a tool of advocacy and a signal of their power and status. As the Justices have taken on a greater advocacy role in the modern era, they have also provoked more laughter.

The performative nature of courtroom humor is apparent …

Judicial Choice Among Cases For Certiorari, Tonja Jacobi, Álvaro Bustos

Faculty Articles

How does the Supreme Court choose among cases to grant cert? In a model with a strategic Supreme Court, a continuum of rule-following lower courts, a set of potential cases for revision, and a distribution of future lower court cases, we show that the Court takes the case that will most significantly shape future lower court case outcomes in the direction that the Court prefers. That is, the Court grants cert to the case with maximum salience. If the Court is rather liberal (or conservative), then the most salient case is that which moves the discretionary range of the legal …