Political Science Commons^™

W(H)Ither Tocqueville's 'Seed Of Free Institutions'?: The Importance And Decline Of Localism In America, Jonathan W. Pidluzny

Commonwealth Review of Political Science

Alexis de Tocqueville argues that local government is the "seed of free institutions." On his account, active participation by citizens at the local level helps guard against the three great dangers to modern democratic regimes: sum of selfish preferences majoritarianism, tyranny of die majority, and mild despotism. This paper traces the decline of localism in the United States--an inevitable consequence of trends Tocqueville himself foresaw--and comments on the consequences, both from the perspective of the political community and from the perspective of individuals pursuing a decent and happy life.

Institutional Change And The Presidential Mandate, Julia R. Azari

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Often treated as a unified concept with a single definition, the presidential mandate actually encompasses multiple definitions, each connected to distinct ideas about democracy and presidential leadership. This article looks at how and when modern presidents have used mandate rhetoric and seeks to explain changes in presidential mandate-claiming patterns. Using an original dataset of 1,467 presidential communications from 1933 through 2009, I find that after 1969 presidents became more likely to use election results to justify their actions. However, they also became less likely to emphasize the magnitude of the election result, focusing their mandate rhetoric instead on campaign promises …

The Federal Banking Regulators: Agency Capture, Regulatory Failure, And Industry Collapse During The 2008 Financial Crisis, Justin Rex

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation examines the process of agency capture at four federal bank regulatory agencies leading up to the 2008 financial crisis: the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve, The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and The Office of Thrift Supervision. Though public administration and policy scholars have moved away from capture theory toward a more pluralistic understanding of agency policymaking, recent events like the Gulf oil spill, coal mining disasters, and the 2008 financial crisis have renewed attention to the role lax regulation plays in disasters and crises. As such, I set out to explore whether banks …

Social Construction And Political Decision Making In The American Prison System(S), Jeremiah Olson

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

With over two million inmates, the United States’ prison population is the largest in the world. Nearly one in one hundred Americans are behind bars, either in prisons or pre-trial detention facilities. The rapid growth in incarceration is well-documented. However, social science explanations often stop at the prison gates, with little work on treatment inside prisons. This black box approach ignores important bureaucratic decisions, including the provision of rehabilitative services and the application of punishment.

This dissertation offers a systematic analysis of treatment decisions inside the American prisons. I use a mixed methods approach, combining multiple quantitative datasets with environmental …

Kantian Peace Extended: Liberal Influences And Military Spending, Isaac M. Castellano

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

The Kantian Triangle of democratic institutions, IGOs, and economic interdependence has received a great deal of attention by international relations scholars. This project expands on liberal theory by arguing the pacific effects of the Kantian Triangle extend beyond dyadic context, and shapes state decision making on defense spending decisions. This project asserts that as states (1) build democratic institutions, (2) increase the number of memberships in international intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and (3) exposes domestic markets to the global economy and subsequent interdependence on foreign markets for both imports and exports, they are less likely to allocate resources toward the military. …

Mediator Impartiality And Mediator Interest, Su-Mi Lee

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

Scholars have debated whether mediator impartiality or mediator interest plays a more vital role in bringing about a successful outcome. This research develops a comprehensive model that accounts for mediation occurrence and medication outcome in terms of an additive model of both mediator impartiality and mediator interest. The two channels through which mediators influence the changes of mediation and occurrence and outcome are hypothesized to be two dimensions of trust, mediator fairness and mediator capacity. This research argues 1) that mediator impartiality contributes to successful mediation outcomes by improving disputants’ trust in mediators’ fairness and 2) that mediator interest increases …

Changing America: The Impact Of Immigration On Welfare Attitudes And Welfare Reform, Jason E. Kehrberg

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

The purpose of my dissertation is to further our understanding of why some states restricted immigrant access to welfare in the 1990s while other states granted immigrants access to social programs. With the passage of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), many states diverged from equal access to welfare programs, such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), for immigrants arriving after 1996. Very little scholarly work examines the variance in immigrants’ access to welfare programs. Current research studying welfare attitudes and policy has largely failed to investigate whether and how the influx of immigrants over the last …

Law Enforcement Personnel And Lawmaking, Katrina Roberts

A with Honors Projects

Police officers have the difficult job of reconciling two deeply held but conflicting values: our desire to be safe and secure and our strong belief in the right of individuals to be free from government coercion and excessive control. How law enforcement officers and departments handle this conflict has a direct bearing on how the public sees them. As a culture, we expect our police officers to be able to balance these goals, but when they veer off too far we criticize them. At the extreme, too heavy a focus on order and safety may border on police brutality.

Public Post-Secondary Experiential Internship: A Qualitative Evaluation Of Wildcat Interest Group’S Student Internship Program At The University Of Kentucky, And Its Benchmark Competitors, Nolan Jackson

Lewis Honors College Capstone Collection

This thesis will identify the early motivation for a program conceived by the Student Government Association at the University of Kentucky to penetrate civic apathy and enhance the politically engaged. This qualitative assessment of “Wildcats in Washington” of the Student Internship Program will detail the conception and implementation of the student-facilitated, student-sponsored experiential internship program reserved for the students of the University of Kentucky.

Additionally, this thesis will measure the uniqueness of the University Student Government’s governmental relations and internship initiative against similar efforts at institutions’ in three measurable populations.

Finally, this thesis will briefly address “Wildcats in Washington’s” current …

American Politics: A Very Short Introduction, Richard M. Valelly , '75

Political Science Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Averting Dyadic Conflict: The Role Of International Political Economy, Michael James Langlois

Wayne State University Dissertations

My dissertation explores the potential pacifying effect of dyadic economic interactions on international conflict. Research literature on the role of economic ties and conflict is complex and there are opposing findings. This study dives into this problem and brings new evidence to bear on this lasting debate. I argue that dyadic economic ties, introduced as dense economic integration (DEI) in this study, have a pacifying effect on the onset of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) and the escalation of those disputes up to interstate war. To evaluate this argument, I examine the presence of conflict and the level of DEI from …

"Experimenting With An Embedded Librarian In An American Government Class", Shyam Sriram

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

No abstract provided.

"To Be A Rock And Not To Roll: Promoting Political Literacy Through Music And Mixtapes", Shyam Sriram

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

No abstract provided.

Land Restitution, Traditional Leadership And Belonging: Defining Barokologadi Identity, Robin L. Turner

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

How do government policies and practices affect struggles over collective identity and struggles over land? Examining the interconnections among collective identity struggles, land struggles and state policies and practices in post-apartheid South Africa, this paper argues that the government's contradictory policies and ambivalent practices have aggravated collective struggles over the boundaries of belonging. Specifically, the differing definitions of community set forth in traditional leadership, land tenure and land restitution policies exacerbate existing divisions among ‘communities’ concurrently subject to these policies and create practical policy dilemmas for decision-makers. This paper illustrates the interplay between public policies and collective identity struggles through …

Managing The Polarities Of Democracy: A Theoretical Framework For Positive Social Change, William J. Benet

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

People around the globe have embraced democracy to bring about positive social change to address our environmental, economic, and militaristic challenges. Yet, there is no agreement on a definition of democracy that can guide social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model is a unifying theory of democracy to guide healthy, sustainable, and just social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model consists of ten elements, organized as five polarity pairs: freedom & authority, justice & due process, diversity & equality, human-rights & communal-obligations, and participation & representation. In this model each element has positive aspects and negative aspects and …

Practicing What We Teach: The Politics Behind Creating A State Social Studies Curriculum, Jacquelyn Visger

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

Societal importance of the social studies fields is the key to what makes the development of social studies curriculum political. State standardized curricula adopted in the 1990s gave freedom to individual states to create their own standards on what information they were requiring their students to learn. The standards we require students to know inherently molds their political philosophy throughout schooling. By focusing attention on two separate cases, Texas and Michigan, inherent differences in the creation process of these standards are highlighted to show how the differences in the creation process have an effect on the standards document. This thesis …

The Virtual Watercooler: Influences Of Political Comedy On Social Media Discussion, Andrew Abad

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

With the emergence of social media activity as a daily phenomenon for most Americans, online users are becoming greater consumers of political information, and are choosing to share that information through social media outlets. A virtual "watercooler effect" is created, in the form of online political debates and arguments. This study examines the connection between viewers of political comedy programmings (television shows like The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report) and political discussion on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Using a survey of EMU undergraduate students that measures political efficacy and media habits, …

Committee Jurisdiction, Congressional Behavior And Policy Outcomes, John M. De Figueiredo

Faculty Scholarship

The literature on congressional committees has largely overlooked the impact of jurisdictional fights on policy proposals and outcomes. This paper develops a theory of how legislators balance the benefits of expanded committee jurisdiction against preferred policy outcomes. It shows why a) senior members and young members in safe districts are most likely to challenge a committee’s jurisdiction; b) policy proposals may be initiated off the proposer’s ideal point in order to obtain jurisdiction; c) policy outcomes will generally be more moderate with jurisdictional fights than without these turf wars. We empirically investigate these results examining proposed Internet intellectual property protection …

Judicial Attention As A Scarce Resource: A Preliminary Defense Of How Judges Allocate Time Across Cases In The Federal Courts Of Appeals, Marin K. Levy

Faculty Scholarship

Federal appellate judges no longer have the time to hear argument and draft opinions in all of their cases. The average annual filing per active judgeship now stands at 330 filed cases per year — more than four times what it was sixty years ago. In response, judges have adopted case management strategies that effectively involve spending significantly less time on certain classes of cases than on others. Various scholars have decried this state of affairs, suggesting that the courts have created a “bifurcated” system of justice with “separate and unequal tracks.” These reformers propose altering the relevant constraints of …

The Role Of Peacebuilding And Conflict Management In A Future American Grand Strategy: Time For An “Off Shore” Approach?, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.