Political Science Commons^™

La Fin De La Pensée? Philosophie Analytique Contre Philosophie Continentale, Babette Babich

Research Resources

No abstract provided.

Framing Non-Whites And Producing Second-Class Citizens In France And Portugal, Bernd Reiter

Government and International Affairs Faculty Publications

The quality of contemporary democracies hinges on the breadth and depth of the citizenship regimes on which democracy ultimately rests. This article argues that, to assess citizenship, two important dimensions are of crucial interest, namely to what extent formal citizens are able to live and practice substantive citizenship roles and, secondly, how access to citizenship rights is used by different societal groups in order to defend privilege. Having conducted a comparative case study of Portugal and France, I now argue that political elites are contributing to a framing of non-whites as foreigners and immigrants because it serves their purpose and …

Hiv/Aids In The Muslim-Majority Countries: Formula For Low Prevalence, Kaoru Yamaguchi

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The Muslim-majority countries long had been considered to be free of HIV/AIDS epidemic because of their strict religious and moral codes. However, the HIV prevalence rates are increasing in some Islamic states, and even more or so rapidly in a several cases that it is no longer valid to assume the Islamic religion protects its followers from the risks of contracting HIV. Contrary to the popular belief concerning the prevention of the HIV/AIDs epidemic, data collected from well-recognized international organizations such as the WHO and Freedom House indicate that democratization, strong government leadership, and wider and equal human rights for …

A Different Way Home: Resettlement Patterns In Northern Uganda, Sandra F. Joireman, Adam Sawyer, Juliana Wilhoit

Political Science Faculty Publications

After decades of civil conflict leading to massive internal displacement of people, Northern Uganda is peaceful again and hundreds of thousands of displaced people have returned to the area. Using data from maps and satellite imagery, we examine the placement of homes before, during and after the conflict. Examining two study sites, one that experienced a great deal of violence over an extended period of time and one where the experience of violence was more limited, we observe the clustering of home placement in the post-conflict period. As resettlement occurs, there is also evidence of increased location of homes in …

Play Fair With Recidivists, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Retributivists thus face a difficult challenge. Either we must go against the social grain, and perhaps our own intuitions, by insisting that a criminal offense carry the same penalty or punishment no matter how many previous convictions an offender has accrued; or we must find a way to justify the recidivist premium. I shall take the second route here by arguing that recidivism itself is a kind of criminal offense. In developing this argument, I shall rely on Youngjae Lee's insightful analysis of "recidivism as omission." I shall complement his analysis, however, by grounding it in a conception of criminal …

Should She Run? The Decision For Female Congressíenal Candidates, Laura . J. Maloney

Honors Theses

This study, “Should She Run? The decision for female congressional candidates,” explores Why Women decide to or not to run for Congress. lt focuses on the influence of state political Culture with a case study on the emergence of female candidates in the primaries for U.S. House of Representative races New England districts from 2002-2010. After running a series of general linear models, the study Ends that certain aspects of a state’s political culture do impact female candidate emergence in New England. Looking forward, it suggests that the key to shrinking the gender gap in the U.S. Congress is to …

Barack Obama: The Inevitable Nominee, Bradley M. Forsythe

Masters Theses

The 2008 Democratic primary is often regarded as a once-in-a-lifetime political event. Democratic frontrunner and former first lady Hillary Clinton faced off against Illinois junior Senator Barack Obama. Despite a commanding position in national polling that led many pundits to declare the race Clinton's to lose, her campaign faltered during the primary, allowing Obama to find himself in a commanding position to be the Democratic Party's nominee for president. An exploration of the two campaigns, however, reveals stark differences in strategy, messaging, fundraising, and the use of technology.

In terms of strategy, Hillary Clinton's campaign was unprepared to contest the …

Foreign Aid: Addiction, Weaning, Recovery?, Peter Foster

Masters Theses

Africa has long been seen as a foreign world to the West. Early pioneers to the continent called it "the dark continent" and during the Scramble for Africa in the late 1890s, European countries divided largely unexplored regions of the continent between themselves. Many European colonists are today reviled for their colonial practices of racial segregation, exclusion of locals from the political process and the imprisonment of black leaders. Through conquest and regulation, majority black populations were taken advantage of by European powers which divided the continent and drew up their own boundaries, ultimately splitting or forcibly combining ethnic groups. …

Regional Voting Patterns In Contemporary Presidential Elections: The Effect Of Race, Income And Abortion Viewpoint, John W. T. Megson

Masters Theses

This study examines regional differences in the effect a voter's race, viewpoint on abortion and income have upon his or her vote in presidential elections. Using binary logistic regression and log odds, the results show that regional differences do exist. Whilst race still has the largest effect in the South, the effect in what scholars have termed the Non-South varies with the North Central region differing noticeably from the North East and the West. With regard to abortion attitudes the lowest observed effect was in the South, with attitudes playing a greater effect in the North Central and West regions.

Ir Theory And State Cooperation On Blood Diamonds, Holly Thomas

Masters Theses

Blood diamonds, or "conflict diamonds," have funded rebel movements and terrorist organizations worldwide. Bloodshed over these diamonds, the conflicts they prolonged, and the horrific human rights violations associated with the competition for this natural resource, resulted in an international effort to regulate rough diamonds, and has become an issue for states, institutions, non-government organizations (NGOs), media, and the public. Forums were held in 2001, known as the Kimberley Process, to discuss the threat of conflict diamonds. With the United Nations' support, state and nonstate actors devised the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), a non-binding agreement to stop the import and …

United Nations Military Interventions And Democracy: Factors For Success, Nathan M. Polak

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the effects of various military planning and target-state variables to determine what influences democratic change within a target state undergoing a United Nations military intervention. The variables found to be significant are further explored and refined in a case study of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Then, these refined indicators are tested in a comparative case study of the United Nations Interim Mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS). Ultimately, it is found that the desire and motivation of contributing states and that the deployments of UN troops in …

Sources Of Media Bias In Coverage Of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The 2010 Gaza Flotilla Raid In German, British, And U.S. Newspapers, Michael Neureiter

Masters Theses

This study examines (1) whether German, British, and U.S. media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is biased, and (2) if such a bias exists, what its sources are. Applying Dave D' Alessio's and Mike Allen's framework for measuring media bias to a sample of 240 newspaper articles on the 2010 Gaza Flotilla Raid, we find that British and especially German newspapers exhibit a significant anti-Israel bias, whereas the results for the United States are mixed. Testing five explanations of media bias commonly mentioned in the relevant literature, we find that a newspaper's political affiliation as well as a country's public …

The Newest 'War On Drugs:' Regulating Pharmaceuticals Through State Litigation, Paul Nolette

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

State-driven litigation has had increasing influence in the development of national policy in recent years, including in national health policy. One prominent recent example includes the efforts of several state governments to bring coordinated constitutional challenges against one of the Obama Administration’s key first term achievements, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This paper examines how states have influenced health care policy influence in a more subtle but no less important litigation campaign. Over the past decade, state prosecutors have reached numerous multi-million dollar settlements with the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies imposing a variety of restrictions on prescription drug …

Review Of Dust-Up: Asbestos Litigation And The Failure Of Commonsense Policy Reform By Jeb Barnes, Paul Nolette

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Systemic Propaganda As Ideology And Productive Exchange, Gerald Sussman

International & Global Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Informed by the works of Marx and his progeny (Lukács, Gramsci, Althusser) as well as more recent marxian scholarship, the purpose of this paper is to explore the role of ideology and propaganda in the production and circulation of commodities and in the informalization of the contemporary workplace, particularly in the context of the promotional economy, politics, and culture of the United States. The heightened functions of media and communication technologies mark the pinnacle expression of late capitalism—the production, reproduction and colonization of the sphere of consciousness as a necessary condition for the maintenance of the corporate state as it …

Assessing The Timing Of One-Sided Violence In Civil Conflict, Nicholas Christopher Galanos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In times of civil conflict, civilians often attempt to distance themselves from the horrors of combat. However, noncombatants play an integral role in the prospects of victory for both an incumbent and an insurgency. By choosing to support a belligerent in times of civil conflict, civilians can become targets. This thesis looks to determine at what points during civil conflict are noncombatants likely to be targeted by either an incumbent or an insurgent group. Through logistic regression, using Uppsala Conflict Data Program data, this thesis finds that insurgents increase the likelihood of committing one-sided violence after the initial months of …

The Global Social Forum Rhizome: A Theoretical Framework, Peter N. Funke

Government and International Affairs Faculty Publications

This work draws on Deleuze and Guattari's image of the ‘rhizome’ to develop a framework for mapping and understanding the global social forum process and its implications for the broader global left. The image of the rhizome is insightful for analytically accentuating the nature and workings, as well as the challenges and contemporary shortcomings, of the social forum process and more generally the broader global movement(s). Thriving on multiplicity and thus lacking a dominant core or main axis, the social forum-as-rhizome emphasizes the multi-connectivity and heterogeneity of this process, which has no central actor, issue, strategy, or ideology, beyond the …

Review Of Daniel Mockli's "Strategic Trends 2012: Key Developments In Global Affairs, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This review essay describes and analyzes the content of this annual compilation of international affairs essays published by the Zurich-based Center for Strategic Studies.

Using Self Organizing Maps To Analyze Demographics And Swing State Voting In The 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, Paul T. Pearson, Cameron I. Cooper

Faculty Publications

Emergent self-organizing maps (ESOMs) and k-means clustering are used to cluster counties in each of the states of Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio by demographic data from the 2010 United States census. The counties in these clusters are then analyzed for how they voted in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, and political strategies are discussed that target demographically similar geographical regions based on ESOM results. The ESOM and k-means clusterings are compared and found to be dissimilar by the variation of information distance function.

Revisiting The Ungovernability Debate: Regional Governance And Sprawl In The Usa And Uk, Carol Hager

Political Science Faculty Research and Scholarship

This article links contemporary critiques of regional governance to the crisis of the state in the 1970s and 1980s. Using the example of the politics of sprawl, I explain why collaborative regional planning institutions in New Jersey and the East of England have received such low marks from government participants and local populations, despite their success in completing land-use plans. I argue that these new governance institutions inadvertently revive issues of power, accountability and democratic legitimacy stemming from the crisis of the state. British and American governments interpreted it as a crisis of ungovernability, and their subsequent reforms were aimed …