Other Political Science Commons^™

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. …

Kurdish Public Opinion In Turkey: Cultural And Political Demands Of The "Kurdish Street", Ekrem Karakoc, H. Ege Ozen

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of The Slave Trade In South-East Asia, Rosanna Pathmanathan

Honors Theses

Modern slavery has managed to persist through the 21^st century as it has shape-shifted into new occupations and various forms of entrapments. However, my research will prove that despite its seemingly different situations, multitudes of modern industries continue to employ harsh and unfair working conditions which utilize labor laws that restrict protections for employees. To fully comprehend how these new-age jobs are in fact new forms of old-age slavery, it is paramount to look into past forms of enslavement – primarily looking into Columbus’ discovery of Hispaniola and the Atlantic Slave Trade. To aid us easing into modern-day enslavement, …

La Habana: A History Of Society, Livelihood, Movement, And Land Use On The Iquitos-Nauta Highway, Katie Brown

Undergraduate Honors Theses

With increasing infrastructural projects and land titling in the Peruvian Amazon, many changes are occurring within small roadside communities. In this case study, we investigate how these changes impact livelihoods, land use, travel patterns, and social relations within the broader concepts of development, privatization of land, and commodification of nature. Specifically we focus on the caserío La Habana situated on the Iquitos-Nauta highway in the Loreto region of Peru. Semi-formal interviews and ethnographic methods were conducted to gather information on social organization, history of the community, land use practices, migration patterns, opinions on the road, and livelihood strategies. After data …

The Slow Creep Of Settler Colonialism: Exploring Water Control In Palestine, Lina Abu Akleh

Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the Israeli-Palestinian water issue using a settler colonial framework. It highlights the contributions made to this field under the often used framework of hydro-hegemony to understand water issues in Israel-Palestine. Using a settler colonial framework helps to better describe the issue and highlight the slow creep of settler colonialism over the years. It also helps to see beyond the power dynamics and its relationship to domination and consent to understand the realities that Palestinians face on the ground. In addition, this thesis will help build towards exploring resistance to water control under settler colonialism. Therefore, this thesis …

Agreeing To Disagree: Diversity, Political Contractualism, And The Open Society, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Political contractualism is important in societies characterized by substantial moral and political disagreement and diversity. The very disagreement that makes the social contract necessary, however, also makes agreement difficult. Call this the paradox of diversity, which is the result of a tension between two necessary conditions of political contractualism: existence and stability. The first involves showing the possibility of some agreement, while the second involves showing that the agreement can persist. To solve both of these problems, I develop a multilevel contract theory that I call the “open society” model of political contractualism that incorporates diversity into the contractual model …

Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, And Isis: A Study On The Life Cycle Of Terrorist Organizations, Taylor Dedic

Honors Theses

This paper discusses the internal activities of terrorist organizations during their different periods of high and low activity. The research in this paper focuses on the case studies of three organizations, al Qaeda, Boko Haram, and ISIS, and analyzes the shifts in their activities throughout their life cycles. By focusing on terrorist organizations rooted in Salafi-Jihadism, this paper aims to point out the importance of analyzing these organizations through the context of their own ideology. Due to their ideology, these groups view their fight to be centuries-long, thus they do not view a period of reduced activity as their defeat. …

Can Cities Be Feminist? A Cross-National Analysis Of Factors Affecting Local Female Representation In Latin America, Katie Davis

Honors Theses

Women are underrepresented in mayor’s offices and on city councils across Latin America. In this paper, I examine gender-based differences in individual opinions toward running for office in Argentina and Uruguay, as well as conduct a twenty-six country analysis on factors related to female representation in municipal government. Based on these analyses, I make three main conclusions about female local representation in Latin America. The first conclusion is that women in Latin America are significantly less likely to want to run or feel qualified to run for office. The second conclusion is that cross-national variation in the percentage of female …

Should The United States Collect Intelligence On Its Close Allies?, Shannon Brophy

Honors Theses

The United States does not collect intelligence against all countries with the same intensity. Members of the so-called Five Eyes alliance—the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand— are believed to be excluded, and allegedly so is the United Arab Emirates. Should this policy continue in today’s unpredictable and fast-changing geopolitical environment? The Five Eyes alliance has given the United States an unmatched level of integration with its allies by increasing intelligence sharing between its members—but does this mean the United States should still not collect intelligence on them? Especially now that the UAE has allegedly been …

Tyranny Plagued The French Revolution, Christy Leigh Salinari

Honors Theses

Liberty, equality, and fraternity were the three original pillars of the French Revolution at the start in 1789. The slogan became the rallying cry for the embittered French people in their initial pursuit for political and social transformation. The French Revolution is perhaps the most prominent contemporary illustration of a violent revolution which ultimately was successful, resulting in a model of democratic government. The French Revolution reached a decade in length wherein there were countless demonstrations, massacres, wars, civil unrest, and political enlightenment. The disorganized nature of the revolution cultivated a vast array of political beliefs, which ranged from radical …

Cases Studied In Genocide Studies And Prevention And Journal Of Genocide Research And Implications For The Field Of Genocide Studies, Jeffrey Bachman

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The adoption of the Genocide Convention in 1948 was accompanied by the emergence of genocide as a field of study, first in the form of Holocaust Studies, followed by Genocide Studies, then Comparative Genocide Studies and, most recently, Critical Genocide Studies. Over the last 20-30 years, the field of genocide studies has greatly expanded. According to Alexander Hinton, “As the outlines of the field emerge more clearly, the time is right to engage in critical reflections about the state of the field.” This article seeks to enhance the field of genocide studies by answering Hinton’s call for reflective analysis. It …

Actors As Engineers: The Reconstruction Of Antifascism In Defa Films, 1949-1961. [2020], Jonathan Herr

Master's Theses

The East German film industry (led by state film company DEFA) had, since its inception in 1946, focused heavily upon the theme of antifascism. However, the meaning and definition of antifascism changed dramatically over the course of East Germany’s early history. In DEFA’s earliest days, antifascism was a confrontation of Germany’s Nazi past and argued that capitalism was a forebearer to fascism. As the East German state formed, antifascism evolved, casting America and its unchecked capitalism as the enemy to democracy. Here DEFA films still confronted Germany’s dark past, though the end goal of the films was to promote hope …

College Students And Their Political Participation, Emily Williams

Honors Projects

Historically, college students have had a low voter turnout despite having particularly high political engagement. This is a problem because it is instilling a bad habit of not politically engaging to the extent that a productive United States citizen should. By not voting, Americans are losing their rights to representation that reflects their views and beliefs. In this paper I discuss why this low voter turnout is negative and what the United States can do, via the government and educational institutions, to increase voter turnout. In this research, the reader will discover the reasons for low voting rates among college …