Models and Methods Commons^™

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 …

A Pca-Ols Model For Assessing The Impact Of Surface Biophysical Parameters On Land Surface Temperature Variations, Mohammad Karimi Firozjaei, Seyed Kazem Alavipanah, Hua Liu, Amir Sedighi, Naeim Mijani, Majid Kiavarz, Qihao Weng

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

Analysis of land surface temperature (LST) spatiotemporal variations and characterization of the factors affecting these variations are of great importance in various environmental studies and applications. The aim of this study is to propose an integrated model for characterizing LST spatiotemporal variations and for assessing the impact of surface biophysical parameters on the LST variations. For this purpose, a case study was conducted in Babol City, Iran, during the period of 1985 to 2018. We used 122 images of Landsat 5, 7, and 8, and products of water vapor (MOD07) and daily LST (MOD11A1) from the MODIS sensor of the …

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 …

A Comparison Of Two Different Theoretical Approaches To Commons, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

A comparison of elements of the commons theory approaches of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom and Roger A. Lohmann.

Legislative Committee Systems: A Design Perspective, Chase Stoddard

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

Committees are the defining characteristic of the modern legislature. While the centrality and study of party politics goes back further than committee politics, the focus on committee systems emerged over the course of the twentieth century, and legislatures could not function as we understand them without this mechanism. The United States Congressional committee system is the most studied system, yet virtually every country utilizes a committee system of some sort within its legislature. Despite their ubiquity in and centrality to the operations of legislatures, committees remain insufficiently studied, especially outside of the United States. The existing body of work tends …

Process-Tracing Research Designs: A Practical Guide, Jacob Ricks, Amy H. Liu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Process-tracing has grown in popularity among qualitative researchers. However, unlike statistical models and estimators—or even other topics in qualitative methods—process-tracing is largely bereft of guidelines, especially when it comes to teaching. We address this shortcoming by providing a step-by-step checklist for developing a research design to use process-tracing as a valid and substantial tool for hypothesis testing. This practical guide should be of interest for both research application and instructional purposes. An online appendix containing multiple examples facilitates teaching of the method.

The Onset, Spread, And Prevention Of Mass Atrocities: Perspectives From Network Models, Charles H. Anderton, Jurgen Brauer

Economics Department Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Conceptualizing And Measuring Women’S Political Leadership: From Presence To Balance, Devin K. Joshi, Ryan Goehrung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article conceptualizes an innovative understanding and measurement of women's political leadership, theoretically justifies its application, and analyzes contemporary variation in its patterns through comparative case studies. In recent years, scholars of comparative government have studied with great interest the election of female prime ministers and presidents (e.g., Derichs and Thompson 2013; Jalalzai 2013) and cross-national variation in female members of parliaments (MPs) and cabinets (e.g., Bauer and Tremblay 2011; Paxton and Hughes 2017; Suraj, Scherpereel, and Adams 2014). Yet, when it comes to regions beyond Europe and the Americas, comparative empirical analysis of women's political leadership (WPL) across national-level …

Conceptualizing And Measuring Women’S Political Leadership: From Presence To Balance, Devin K. Joshi, Ryan Goehrung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article conceptualizes an innovative understanding and measurement of women's political leadership, theoretically justifies its application, and analyzes contemporary variation in its patterns through comparative case studies. In recent years, scholars of comparative government have studied with great interest the election of female prime ministers and presidents (e.g., Derichs and Thompson 2013; Jalalzai 2013) and cross-national variation in female members of parliaments (MPs) and cabinets (e.g., Bauer and Tremblay 2011; Paxton and Hughes 2017; Suraj, Scherpereel, and Adams 2014). Yet, when it comes to regions beyond Europe and the Americas, comparative empirical analysis of women's political leadership (WPL) across national-level …

Study On The Efficiency Of China’S Main River Ports Based On Dea Model, Yunwu Cao

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Research On The Route Optimization Of Huzhou Port’S Outbound Container, Bo Zhang

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of Shanghai Aviation Hub Logistics Competitiveness, Tuo Chen

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Comparative Study On Port Logistics Service Capability Of China’S Main Ports, Yiwen Song

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Source Of Container Cargo And Passenger Flow : A Case Of Shanghai Port, Dong Xu

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Measuring Public Utilization Perception Potential Of Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Julius Keller, Daniel Kwasi Adjekum, Bortiorkor Nii Tsui Alabi, Brian Kozak

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

The integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into the National Air Space (NAS) in recent times has been met by mixed public responses. The paper establishes four constructs each of which encapsulates multiple backgrounds and concerns of the stakeholders: functional knowledge, utilization trust, operational integration support, and safety risk-benefits. The paper hypothesizes that these constructs can serve as underlying components for a research instrument namely, the Public Utilization Perception Potential (PUPP) which can be used to assess the opinions of the public on UAS integration into NAS. Responses from the public on items in a beta-tested survey instrument were analyzed …