Agenda Preference Deliberations,
2010
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
Agenda Preference Deliberations, David Pulliam
LSU Master's Theses
Currently the public is relegated to the electoral process, surveys and polls, and group participation in order to voice their agenda preferences. Various literatures describe the decreasing influence of the general public within the agenda setting portion of the policymaking process. This thesis assesses the agenda setting and public policy literatures in order to determine how issues become part of the policy agenda, looks to the public opinion literature to determine how capable the public is in being part of the policymaking process, and utilizes the deliberative democracy literature to construct deliberations that make it possible to get the public …
The Role Of Old-Fashioned Racism: Disaggregating Symbolic Racism In The United States,
2010
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
The Role Of Old-Fashioned Racism: Disaggregating Symbolic Racism In The United States, Leslie Curtis Cox
LSU Master's Theses
Old-fashioned, biological, or "Jim Crow" racism is viewed by many in the political science and psychology literature to be largely a relic of the past. In the post-segregation era it has been replaced as a political force by symbolic racism, although its residual effect still operates within symbolic racism as negative racial affect. Symbolic racism is thought of as a coherent belief system that describes whites‘ attitudes not only in the United States, but in some European democracies as well. This conceptualization of symbolic racism ignores the differences in the historical legacy of racism across different regional and demographic contexts. …
Democratic Triumph, Scholarly Pessimism,
2010
Portland State University
Democratic Triumph, Scholarly Pessimism, Bruce Gilley
Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
This article discusses how the democratic form of government has gone from an oddity to the most common form of government in the world. The written works on democracy in the past twenty years have dealt primarily with the writers' growing sense of insecurity, the belief that history runs in cycles, and the belief that democracy will run its course and the world will find itself returned to an authoritarian existence. Samuel P. Huntington expressed his pessimism with democracy in his book "The Third Wave." Huntington believes that only countries with a substantial Western influence will be able to sustain …
The Many Faces Of Strict Scrutiny: How The Supreme Court Changes The Rules In Race Cases,
2010
Loyola Marymount University
The Many Faces Of Strict Scrutiny: How The Supreme Court Changes The Rules In Race Cases, Evan Gerstmann, Christopher Shortell
Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations
In this paper, we argue that there is no single test called strict scrutiny when the Court considers claims of racial discrimination. In fact, the Court changes the rules depending on why and how the government is using race. By examining racial redistricting, remedial affirmative action, and diversitybased affirmative action cases, we show how the Court uses at least three very different versions of strict scrutiny. The costs of maintaining the fiction of unitary strict scrutiny is high. In the area of racial profiling, for example, courts refuse to apply strict scrutiny for fear that it will either overly hamper …
Doing Good By Doing Well? The Political Economy Of The Medical Biotechnology Industry In The United States,
2010
CUNY Graduate Center
Doing Good By Doing Well? The Political Economy Of The Medical Biotechnology Industry In The United States, Volker Lehmann
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This study is dedicated to the political economy of the medical biotechnology industry in the United States. The study combines interviews with more than 150 biotechnology actors with a historical analysis and evidence from publicly available data bases. The ascent of this new industry took place in the United States first and foremost, because there, scientific advancements coincided with the rise of supply-side economics, a policy shift that was part of a larger, neoliberal, ideological shift. Despite free-market rhetoric, specific clusters within the United States became the world's leading biotechnology clusters because of a history of targeted interventions to stimulate …
The Closed Rule,
2010
University of Virginia
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. …
Timeless Strategy Meets New Medium: Going Negative On Congressional Campaign Web Sites, 2002-2006,
2010
Oberlin College
Timeless Strategy Meets New Medium: Going Negative On Congressional Campaign Web Sites, 2002-2006, James N. Druckman, Martin J. Kifer, Michael Parkin
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
In a few short years, the World Wide Web has become a standard part of candidates' campaign tool kits. Virtually all candidates have their own sites, and voters, journalists, and activists visit the sites with increasing frequency. In this article, we study what candidates do on these sites in terms of the information they present by exploring one of the most enduring and widely debated campaign strategies: going negative. Comparing data from over 700 congressional candidate web sites, over three election cycles (2002, 2004, and 2006), with television advertising data, we show that candidates go negative with similar likelihoods across …
Pliny's Defense Of Empire,
2010
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
Pliny's Defense Of Empire, Thomas Raymond Laehn
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Despite perennial interest in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History as a record of the prodigious, the quotidian, and the useful in Rome in the first century AD, for over half of a millennium Pliny has been considered little more than an inept compiler of facts and marvels intellectually incapable of formulating a cogent argument supported through the selective marshalling of his materials. It is my contention that Pliny’s encyclopedic text is in fact a first-rate work of political philosophy constituting an apology for Roman imperial expansion grounded in a sophisticated conception of man as the only being capable of passing …
Commonality, Competition, And Stereotypes: Can Whites, Blacks, And Latinos Play Politics Together In The United States,
2010
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
Commonality, Competition, And Stereotypes: Can Whites, Blacks, And Latinos Play Politics Together In The United States, Betina Cutaia Wilkinson
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
The literature on racial attitudes and coalition formation has focused on Latinos and African Americans in the U.S. In this project, I present a theoretical framework exploring what whites, blacks and Latinos think of each other specifically examining perceptions of commonality, competition and stereotypes. The two major theories that I test are contact theory and the racial threat hypothesis. This project is unique in its comprehensive analysis of the precursors of coalition formation regarding African Americans, Latinos and whites and its adoption of quantitative and qualitative approaches to answer the main research questions. Moreover, very little research has explored the …
Experiential Learning Of U.S. Presidents In The Foreign Policy Decision-Making Context,
2010
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
Experiential Learning Of U.S. Presidents In The Foreign Policy Decision-Making Context, Samuel Berwyn Robison
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation examines U.S. presidential learning—defined as a change in presidential operational code beliefs due to their experiences in office—in the foreign policy decision-making context. These beliefs are teased out from presidents’ representations of power relationships via verb usage in their speeches. A database of more than 4,000 foreign policy-related speeches obtained by the author was employed for this project, and with this data, I examine several potential dynamics of and influences on learning.
I look at trends in belief change over time, and examine the relative stability and interconnectedness of “core” versus “peripheral” beliefs. I then test the influence …
Institutional Design And The Economy: Disentangling The Effects Of Judicial Independence And Judicial Review On Economic Development,
2010
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
Institutional Design And The Economy: Disentangling The Effects Of Judicial Independence And Judicial Review On Economic Development, Kaitlyn Louise Sill
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Scholars, politicians, and economic leaders widely believe that an independent, efficient judiciary facilitates economic growth. However, relatively few empirical studies have been conducted to evaluate the relationship between the judiciary and the economy. As a result, we have a limited and an ambiguous understanding of the effect of courts. In this dissertation, I provide insight into the relationship between the judiciary and economic growth by disentangling judicial independence and judicial review and evaluating their effects using a large-n, comparative research design. I empirically demonstrate that judicial independence and judicial review are conceptually distinct and have independent and varying effects on …
Athens And Byzantium: Platonic Political Philosophy In Religious Empire,
2010
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
Athens And Byzantium: Platonic Political Philosophy In Religious Empire, Jeremiah Heath Russell
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
It is traditionally understood that there is a gap, which spans well over one thousand years, between Plato’s own political philosophy and its successor in medieval Islamic philosophy. A most likely bridge between Plato and these later philosophers is Neoplatonism. However, scholars argue that this philosophic school abandoned its predecessor’s emphasis on political philosophy. This dissertation challenges the traditional interpretation by reconstructing a political philosophy based on a Neoplatonic commentary on Plato’s Gorgias. The first two chapters place this commentary within its historical context, as well as its place within the larger Neoplatonic pedagogy. The remainder of the dissertation reconstructs …
