Political Science Commons^™

Short Term Strategies For Long Term Power: The Rise And Potential Fall Of Hugo Chávez, Linden E.S. Schult

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the route to power of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez and the methods by which he has remained in power throughout his presidency. Also, it explores the potential for Chávez to lose power, given the current economic and political situation in Venezuela. The importance of the oil industry, Chávez's suppression of the opposition and control of the media, and constitutional changes and reforms are all discussed as keys to Chávez's continuance in power.

Reducing Recidivism In The State Of California: An Evaluation Of California's Prison And Parole Programs, Heidi C. Wolfgruber

CMC Senior Theses

Studies in the past few years have found that California has the highest recidivism rate in the nation. Until just a few decades ago, many did not believe that the rate of recidivism could be decreased for Robert Martinson’s 1974 study stated that “nothing worked” when trying to rehabilitate criminals. However, a renewed interest has proven that criminals can be rehabilitated. Thus, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), as well as various independent researchers have begun to study the effects of programming on inmates. This thesis evaluates various California in-prison and parole programs in order to determine if …

The Effects On A State When They Lose Their Senior Senator, Adam J. Morris

CMC Senior Theses

The Primary purpose of this paper is to examine the role and importance of Senior Senators in the US Senate. Many states rely on Senators to bring in federal spending in the form of pork. When states lose their Senior Senator and the power they accumulated through increased tenure, they risk losing certain benefits in terms of pork. We use federal expenditures per dollar of tax and analyze how it is affected by Seniority in the Senate. Population, Income, and unemployment rates in each state were controlled for in our regression analysis. It is concluded that increased tenure significantly increases …

Leaflet: Barack Obama

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

A flyer for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Obama, 2010 Inc. No date given. Box 15 Folder 25

China And Brazil: Potential Allies Or Just Brics In The Wall?, Anthony Petros Spanakos

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Brazil is an increasingly important actor in global governance and for China specifically. Sino-Brazilian relations have deepened considerably but they remain concentrated in areas of trade and investment. There is also considerable overlap in interests between the two countries in other areas, such as diplomatic and political relations. At the same time, China must manage carefully important differences that exist over the enlargement of the UN and the potential challenge to the Brazilian industry.

The Closed Rule, Michael Doran

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The closed rule constitutes a critical component of managerial power in the contemporary House of Representatives and an increasingly important element of the legislative process. Subject to the approval of the full membership, the closed rule allows managers to block all amendments to a measure when bringing that measure to the floor. Despite objections from the minority, both Republicans and Democrats regularly use the closed rule when in the majority, and rank-and-file members ordinarily approve any closed rule put to a floor vote. Once rarely used, the closed rule has become managers’ preferred instrument for controlling the House floor agenda. …

Law And Ideology In The U.S. Courts Of Appeals Judicial Review Of Federal Agency Decisions, Jerry D. Thomas

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

The attitudinal model of judicial behavior dominates judicial politics scholarship, including studies of federal courts and agencies. Extant research finds limited support for legal constraints as determinants of judge behavior when agency decisions are under review. Attitudinal scholars suggest judges substitute their policy preferences in place of agency preferences. Contrarily, the legal model suggests judges defer to agencies because of procedures and doctrine rooted in the rule of law.

This study tests hypotheses predicting whether federal agency review decisions in the U.S. Courts of Appeals during 1982-2002 are a function of judges‘ attitudes, namely ideology, or a function of legal …

Fairness, Justice And An Individual Basis For Public Policy, Douglas R. Oxley

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Prior models of the policy process have examined how human characteristics can affect policy decision-making in such a way that it leads to aggregate effects on policy outcomes as a whole. I develop a model of the policy process which suggests that emotions related to fair and unfair experiences in the same policy domain are utilized by decision-makers as policy criteria. In the lab, I empirically tested this, and find that emotions and experience related to fairness do influence the policy decision to move away from the status quo alternative. Based upon this result, I simulated the evolution of a …

American Overreach: Strategic Interests And Millennial Ambitions In The Middle East, Asli Bâli, Aziz Rana

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article argues that American actions in the Middle East designed to advance democracy and/or ‘moderation’ tend to yield perverse outcomes that frustrate the aspirations of local actors while undermining the values purportedly being promoted by the US. In order to explain these contradictions, we emphasise the linkage between policies of democracy promotion and long-standing American commitments both to millennialism and geographical omnipresence. As a result of these policies and geopolitical vision, we argue that ‘democracy promotion’ often devolves into a simple defence of American interest – by producing electoral outcomes intended to strengthen local agents seen as compliant with …

Ideological Voting On The Supreme Court: An Analysis Of Judicial Activism On The Burger And Rehnquist Courts, 1969-2004, Tiahna Larsen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The influence of ideology and attitudes on the decision-making process of Supreme Court justices has been well documented, such that the attitudinal model has emerged as the dominant paradigm for understanding judicial behavior. When ideology and personal preferences seem to eclipse legal factors, such as adherence to precedent and deference to the democratically-elected branches, outcries of 'judicial activism' have occurred. Previous studies (Lindquist and Cross 2009) have operationalized judicial activism and have provided measures for studying behavior that may be considered activist (as opposed to restrainist), further supporting the premise that ideology trumps other extra-attitudinal and legal factors in the …

Central Bank Independence: Rules, Practices, And Outcomes, Douglas Aaron Block

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In recent years interest has grown in central bank independence as research has shown that it may affect many important financial issues such as unemployment, inflation, and inflation variability, among others. However, empirical evidence regarding its effect has been inconclusive and there is low correlation among various legal central bank independence measures. In this thesis, I attempt to resolve these problems by generating a new measure of legal central bank independence that takes into account divergence between laws and practices. I then measure the impact that democracy and proportional electoral systems have on reducing this divergence and find that democracy …

New York’S Inbred Judiciary: Pathologies Of Nomination And Appointment Of Court Of Appeals Judges, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

The practice of selecting judges by popular election, commonplace among the American states, has recently come in for a good deal of criticism, much of it well-founded. But if popular election of judges is a bad method of judicial selection, what ought to replace it? Opponents of judicial election typically treat gubernatorial appointment as self-evidently better. New York’s experience with gubernatorial appointment to its highest court, the Court of Appeals, suggests that greater caution is in order. Although New York’s current method of selecting Court of Appeals judges was designed to be wide open and based entirely on merit, the …

Anti-Regulatory Absolutism In The Campaign Arena: Citizens United And The Implied Slippery Slope, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

Perhaps the most striking feature of the Supreme Court’s constitutional campaign jurisprudence is its longstanding, profound hostility to virtually any government regulation whatsoever of campaign speech and spending. Such an approach is highly unusual in constitutional law, which typically tolerates at least some level of regulatory intervention even with respect to strongly protected rights. The Court’s behavior in this respect is consistent with – and, I argue, is best understood as – the kind of behavior in which a court engages when it fears a slide down a slippery slope. But what lies at the bottom of the slope? And …

The Dignity Of Voters—A Dissent, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

Since the waning days of the Burger Court, the federal judiciary has developed a generally well-deserved reputation for hostility to constitutional claims of individual right. In the field of democratic process, however, the Supreme Court has not only affirmed and expanded the applications of previously recognized rights, but has also regularly recognized new individual rights and deployed them with considerable vigor. The latest manifestation of this trend appears to be the emergence of a new species of vote dilution claim that recognizes a constitutionally grounded right against having one’s vote “cancelled out” by fraud or error in the casting and …

Domination, Resistance, And Accommodation In China's One-Child Campaign, Tyrene White

Political Science Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Transnational Political Participation Among Diasporic Migrants, Amanda Hanlin

Wayne State University Dissertations

Contemporary migrants participate in a variety of dual social, political, and economic processes. Sending and receiving states overtly encourage transnational practices when they allow migrants to maintain homeland citizenship regardless of their citizenship status in their receiving communities. Yet, we know little about migrants' ability to enact their citizenship and their propensity to participate in sending and receiving state networks and structures. We know also that diasporas experience and shape transnational spaces differently than other migrants, but we have much to learn about what influences a diaspora's desire and ability to maintain a political affiliation with their homeland and to …

The Art Of Collaboration: Interlocal Collaboration In The Provision Of Fire Services In The Metropolitan Detroit Area, William David Hatley

Wayne State University Dissertations

Metropolitan regions have emerged in the United States as important economic units with numerous small local governments each providing various public services. The movement toward city-county consolidation has frequently been defeated at the polls. Frederickson (1999) argues that metropolitan areas have become so fragmented in their approach to service delivery that they constitute what he describes as a "disarticulated state", characterized by the declining salience of jurisdiction, the fuzziness of borders and an erosion of the capacity of the local jurisdiction to contain and, thereby, manage complex social, economic and political issues. Feiock (2009) contends that much of the urban …

Yitzhak Rabin And The Price Of Peace, Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

A society that wishes to remain free and self-governing must learn to recognize that endemic political violence, including the symbolic violence of character assassination, is an invitation to either tyranny from without or conquest from without. As Edmund Burke put it: ‘Men of intemperate minds cannot be free; their passions forge their fetters.” As a general rule, we might conclude that a fixation on the purity of political outcomes at the expense of the integrity of the political process leads people away from politics to the realm of ideology, from civility to fanaticism. This is the way nations and civilizations …

John R. Bolton: How Barack Obama Is Endangering Our National Sovereignty: A Study Guide, Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

E Pluribus Unum? (Geopolitica), Steven Alan Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.