Other Political Science Commons^™

Women's Political Participation Aided By Constitutional Provisions In Post-Conflict African Nations, Roksana Gorgolewski

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

After two major continental conflicts, many African countries were forced to re-evaluate their constitutions and inherent political structures. This left a window of opportunity for greater female political participation as political leaders and members of the peacemaking process. This project will focus on selected African post-conflict states during the 1970’s to 2000’s that have re-written their constitutions. The general query asks whether those rewritten constitutions have contributed to greater gender equality in the legislature of those states and which constitutional provisions work best at promoting and maintaining gender equality. By studying Geisler’s book Women and the remaking of politics in …

Failure To Protect: Why The International Community Will Fail To Respond To The Cultural Genocide Of Turkish Cypriot People, Hilmi Ulas

Peace Studies Faculty Articles and Research

The international community has time and again committed to never let genocide occur again – however, multiple bouts of genocide have occurred since the Holocaust. This, in addition to the current quandaries surrounding the Uyghurs of China, points to the fact that the international laws and institutions have loopholes that allow for genocides – especially those that enact structural and cultural violence without necessarily employing direct violence – to ‘slip through’.

This has been the case in spite of R2P policies being in place. In this paper, I examine the inability of international systems to capture ‘cultural genocide’ or intervene …

Backlogged Or Logjammed? An Analysis Of The Patterns That Surround The Rape Kit Backlog Across Jurisdictions, Elizabeth Dowd

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Untested rape kits sit in crime labs, hospitals, evidence lockers, or storage facilities untouched. In the worst-case scenarios, rape kits have been thrown out of police storage before the statute of limitations had expired. A major public policy problem is developing as these kits stack up and create a backlog. The primary problem with the rape kit backlog is that all victims are not receiving justice. To solve the problem, the backlog of rape kits needs further exploration and analysis. If a pattern can be established about why the problem is occurring, then policies can be constructed and implemented to …

Teacher Demoralization: Neoliberal Influence On The Complex Education System And Teacher Morale, Dionne Elvira

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Since the 1980s, neoliberal influence has slowly taken over our education system’s vision and purpose. Presently, marketization in schooling has drawn the attention and influence of those of monetary and political power (Bartlett et al., 2002). Accountability measures set in place by the strings attached to school funding and sanctions encompass blanket demands on classroom instruction not equitably designed to support our diverse student populations (Ravitch, 2013; Reigeluth, 2014; Tsang, 2019). The school system, as it presently stands, is managed and maintained under systematic models that do not align to the complex needs of each unique school within its unique …

The Influence Of Foreign Elite Rhetoric: National Identity, Emotions, And Attitudes Toward Austerity, Alessandro Del Ponte

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

How does foreign elite rhetoric affect citizens’ emotions and attitudes about austerity? In a survey experiment conducted on the online blogs of the two major Italian newspapers, participants read a fictional news article where the German Chancellor addressed Italians. Across treatments, I varied whether the message blamed or praised Italians, and whether the message focused on economic or symbolic concerns. Praise generated enthusiasm whereas blame spurred anger and anxiety. Moreover, respondents with a strong national or European identity who read a message of praise were more enthusiastic, less angry, and less opposed to austerity. Finally, people who identify strongly with …

Enemy Mine: Negative Partisanship And Satisfaction With Democracy, Hannah M. Ridge

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

Polarization has increased in recent decades, including emotional distance between partisans. While positive partisan identity has been linked to the absorption of democratic norms and democratic satisfaction, this article addresses the impact of negative partisanship on citizens’ satisfaction with the functioning of their democracies. Employing two measures of negative partisanship – dislike for a party and unwillingness to ever vote for a party – the article finds that negative partisanship is linked to lower satisfaction with democracy, particularly negative partisanship for major parties. It also finds that respondents’ sentiments towards other parties moderate the experience of electoral outcomes; the win/loss …

Muslims’ Religious Freedom And Religiosity: Measurement And Impact, Hannah M. Ridge

Political Science Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Multiple measures of religious freedom and states’ regulation of religion are at work in sociology of religion. These scales apply one score to a country or to a subset of its policies. A uniform state score conceals the internal religious diversity and the heterogeneous experiences of religious freedom that can result. These, in turn, encourage ecological fallacies and mask the disparate impact that religious freedom for one’s own community and for other groups can have on individuals’ preferences and decisions. To demonstrate the value of measuring and studying religious freedom at the individual level, this study applies individual-level assessments of …

Social Networks And The Political Participation Of Moroccan Youths In The 2015 Communal And Regional Elections., Redwan Qutbi

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

This study aimed at identifying the use of social networking among university youths and its relation to the political participation in the regional and communal elections held in Morocco in September in 2015. The researcher used the descriptive approach and relied on the questionnaire as an instrument for data collection. The sample of the study, made up of 400 elements, was randomly chosen. The findings showed that the youth’s use of social networking focused mainly on the events of the 2015 Moroccan communal and regional elections. The findings also showed that political gratification and monitoring of the electoral process and …

2020 Supplementary Directory Of New Bargaining Agents And Contracts In Institutions Of Higher Education, 2013-2019, William A. Herbert, Jacob Apkarian, Joseph Van Der Naald

Publications and Research

The 2020 Supplementary Directory is an analysis of data for the period 2013-2019 of new bargaining units, bargaining agents, and contracts in higher education following publication of our last directory in 2012. The 2020 Supplementary Directory includes a listing of all new bargaining relationships concerning faculty, department chairs, librarians, postdoctoral scholars, academic researchers, and/or graduate student employees. It also includes data about bargaining units that existed prior to 2013 but did not appear in the last directory such as postdoctoral scholar and academic researcher bargaining units. Unlike prior directories, the 2020 Supplementary Directory includes a detailed unit composition description for …

Administering A Ranked-Choice Voting Election: Lessons From London, Ontario, Charlotte Kurs

Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance – Publications

To elect its mayor and council in October of 2018, the City of London, Ontario used ranked-choice voting instead of the traditional first-past-the-post system; the first Canadian city in decades to use an alternative electoral system. London’s experience as the first Ontario municipality to implement ranked-choice voting allows it to offer its experience as a lesson to other municipalities that may be considering making changes to their voting systems.

From the Ontario government’s review of the Municipal Elections Act in 2016 through to the implementation of a ranked-ballot election in 2018, this report details the experience of City of London …

Memorandum Re: Faculty Regent Election Is Tomorrow, Claus Ernst

Faculty Senate

Memo from Faculty Regent Claus Ernst to all WKU faculty and staff regarding the facutly regent election.

State Regulation Of Religion: The Effect Of Religious Freedom On Muslims' Religiosity, Hannah M. Ridge

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

Substantial scholarship argues that regulation of religion suppresses religiosity in a community by reducing individuals’ satisfaction with their religious experience. To date this research has assumed that regulations are enforced on and affect religious communities uniformly. It has also focused heavily on Western Christian populations and aggregated national data. We suggest that state regulation of religious communities and behaviours impacts citizens differently based on their affiliation. Using individual-level assessments of freedom and religiosity from Muslim-majority countries, we show that, at the individual level, restricting freedom suppresses religious belief and behaviour. Restrictions on religious minorities, however, can increase religiosity. As such, …

Human Confusion: Why There Must Be Justice For Non-Humans, David Johns

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Over the last twelve millennia—since agriculture first emerged—humans have increased their exploitation and efforts to control other species and to colonize the Earth. Human on human hierarchy and colonization of other humans follows on the colonization of the natural world. The task of conservation is to undo that colonial relationship. We have been causing the extinction of other life-forms, including hominid species, since we left Africa at least 60,000 years ago. In the last 50 years, or just about two human generations, nearly 68% of all vertebrate animals have disappeared due to human activity (WWF 2020). Humans go into an …

Smoke Or Vapor: Regulation Of Tobacco And Vaping, James Prieger

School of Public Policy Working Papers

E-cigarettes and vaping raise new questions about the risks to health from their use and how they should be regulated and taxed compared to tobacco. The latter has a long history of taxation and a more recent history of regulation in the United States. E-cigarettes, on the other hand, have only recent begun to be regulated, but by treating them as “tobacco products” the federal regulator includes them by default in the regulatory apparatus design for tobacco control and is sending the tacit message that they are just as harmful as smoking. That is not likely to be the case. …

How To Host A Civic Leadership Academy On Your Campus, Elizabeth A. Bennion

eJournal of Public Affairs

This article explains how to design and host a Civic Leadership Academy on a college campus. The author provides detailed advice regarding topics, speakers, and central talking points, while also guiding readers through a series of questions they should ask – and answer – before hosting their own leadership academy. The academy covers a wide range of topics appropriate for campus and off-campus audiences ranging from novices to experienced civic activists. Topics include: critical thinking, fake news, contacting elected officials, the policymaking process, protesting, and community problem-solving. The model can be adopted in whole or in part and the author …

Bryant Votes: A Cross-Departmental Effort To Get Students To Vote, Connor Mathis

Library Staff Publications, Presentations & Journal Articles

Connor Mathis, library assistant, gives a presentation on the process and pitfalls of building a voter registration and education initiatives on a college campus. He details the important role the library can play in initiating and sustaining cross-campus collaborations. Mathis gave this presentation to the Massachusetts Library System in September 2020.

China’S “Three Warfares”: People’S Liberation Army Influence Operations, Edwin S. Cochran, U.S. Department Of Defense, Retired

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The following article—whose author is both a retired US Army officer and retired Department of Defense civilian employee with multiple publications—focuses on Chinese information operations. Readers might wish to speculate on matters such as why the Chinese have organized the way they have, whether the organization leads to optimal integration of tools of national security/political power, and how vulnerable specific populations and even intelligence cultures are to specific types of information operations. One might even conclude that the only thing that has not changed in thousands of years has been the technology available to influence others.

This article examines the …

Globalization, Immigration, And Cultural Change: Conditions That Predict Shifts In Nationalistic Attitudes, Kelly Trail

Dissertations

Globalization is on the rise across the globe. In many instances, nationalism appears to be, too, as evidenced by the anti-immigrant and “nation first” rhetoric and success of presidential candidates, such as Donald Trump in the United States and Sebastian Pinera in Chile. However, the author questioned whether nationalistic attitudes are truly on the rise across the globe and what conditions cause some countries to shift toward nationalistic attitudes in the face of rising globalization, while others to shift away from it. She utilizes descriptive statistics, case studies, and fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to analyze the conditions that influence …

The Political Personality Of 2020 Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden, Anne Marie Griebie, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This working paper presents the results of an indirect assessment of the personality of former U.S. vice president Joe Biden, Democratic nominee in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, from the conceptual perspective of personologist Theodore Millon.

Psychodiagnostically relevant data about Biden were collected from biographical sources and media reports and synthesized into a personality profile using the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with DSM-III-R, DSM-IV, and DSM-5.

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed on the basis of interpretive guidelines provided in the MIDC and …

Mainero And Smoller: The Gop Is Self-Destructing, Mario Maneiro, Fred Smoller

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

"The Republican Party is self destructing. Donald Trump is proudly marching the national and local GOP off a cliff by exploiting America’s racial divide and by rejecting science. The failure of virtually all GOP office holders–Mitt Romney is a notable exception–to challenge the president, emboldens him and deprives the country of needed true two-party balance.

We come to this conclusion from much different political perspectives: one of us (Mainero) is a conservative law professor who was Chief of Staff for Senator John Moorlach (R) when Moorlach was a County Supervisor and the other (Smoller) is a progressive political science professor. …