Political Science Commons^™

Govt 405 - Political And Economic Development (2015), Steven Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

This senior level course is designed to encourage students to apply a biblical Christian worldview and a limited government/free market philosophy to a study of the historical, cultural, demographic, climatic, geological, and geographical factors that have contributed to the political and economic development, as well as the relative prosperity or poverty, of various countries, regions, and cultural groupings. Special attention will be given to the contributing causes of wealth and poverty, colonialism and the post-colonial world, factors that favor or inhibit development, and the operation of the international political economy.

Govt 340 - International Relations (2015), Steven Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

Techniques for managing and resolving conflict in international relations. Emphasis is on current international issues like U.S. arms policy and U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Joseph Nye, Jr.: Understanding Global Conflict And Cooperation, 10th Ed., Steven Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Michael Pillsbury: The Hundred-Year Marathon Study Guide, Steven Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

This is a study guide for the courses of Dr. Steven Alan Samson.

Robert D. Kaplan: Asia's Cauldron, Steven Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Robert D. Kaplan: Monsoon Study Guide, Steven Samson

Faculty Publications and Presentations

This is a study guide for the courses of Dr. Steven Alan Samson.

Mapuche Resilience: Environmental Justice In Chile, Hannah N. Lussier

ENV 434 Environmental Justice

This paper presents a close analysis of the Mapuche Conflict and its implications from an Environmental Justice perspective. It serves to outline the plight of the Mapuche, a South American indigenous group, in their continued struggle to gain the rights to autonomic control over their ancestral territory from the Chilean government. By utilizing a holistic approach to research, this paper serves to provide a background on the conflict as well as to incorporate claims to justice. It chronicles the depth and breadth of media attention on the issue by incorporating perspectives from scholarly articles, news sources and social media platforms. …

Neural Correlates Of Political Attitudes: Emotion And Ideology In The Brain, Dane Gorman Wendell

Dissertations

Do conservatives and liberals have differing sensitivities to avoidance, inhibition, and negative emotion? Do psychological factors beneath our conscious awareness underlie the political ideologies we embrace? Political science researchers have broken new ground over the past ten years in our understanding of the psychology and physiology of political ideology. However, large questions remain about how political ideology may be related to avoidance motivations and negative emotion. This work expands our current knowledge in this area by presenting three studies with multiple methodologies: original survey data, electroencephalographic measurements, and behavioral experiments in a lab setting. Working in the tradition of J.A. …

Book Review: Eisenhower Presidency: Lessons For The Twenty-First Century, Ed. By Andrew J. Polsky, Michael A. Genovese

Political Science and International Relations Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Rethinking The Administrative Presidency: Trust, Intellectual Capital, And Appointee-Careerist Relations In The George W. Bush Administration, By William G. Resh, Michael A. Genovese

Political Science and International Relations Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Olympics In La: 2016 Los Angeles Public Opinion Survey Report, Fernando J. Guerra, Brianne Gilbert, Berto Solis

StudyLA Data Briefs

METHODOLOGY PUBLIC OUTLOOK SURVEY

As part of Forecast LA’s unique approach to forecasting in the Los Angeles region, researchers at the Center for the Study of Los Angeles conduct an outlook survey at the beginning of each year. The LA Region Public Opinion Survey involved 20-minute telephone sessions with more than 2,400 adults living in Los Angeles County. Survey respondents were asked about quality-of-life perceptions, personal economic wellbeing, economic concerns, overall life satisfaction, and various civic issues. SAMPLING Since the primary purpose of this study was to gather representative input from adult residents within the Los Angeles region, an initial …

Is There A Trade-Off? Infant Health Outcomes And Managed Care Competition, Shana L. Moore

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This study offers insights into the impact of competition among Managed Care organizations (MCOs) on infant birthing charges and birth outcomes. Kentucky provides one of the nation’s first case studies to determine successes and failures of Medicaid MCOs, and by doing so, provides a prediction of the impact of Patient Protection Affordable Care Act (PPACA) competition on healthcare costs and birth outcomes. An analysis of a natural policy experiment in the state of Kentucky reveals that infants insured by a Medicaid MCO stay longer in hospitals, are less healthy, and cost more than those insured under Traditional Medicaid prior to …

Three Essays On Interaction In Public Management, Seungjin Choi

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Public management is one of the most important subfields in public administration and plays a role in explaining the variations of government performance. Encouraging public administrators to get motivated through enhancing public service motivation (PSM) and collaborating with each other to accomplish their jobs and organizational objectives are key strategies to enhance the government’s accountability to the public under scarce resources. This dissertation attempts to address these concerns.

First, it conducts a meta-analytical structural equation analysis with regard to the relationships among PSM, value congruence, individual work attitudes, and individual performance and finds that person-organization fit, job satisfaction, and organizational …

Applying A Positive Theory Of Organizations: A Closer Examination Of State Environmental Protection Agencies, Emily Bedwell

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Why do American states organize as they do for environmental protection? According to Moe (1990), “a positive theory of organizations has two goals: 1) explain where institutions come from and why they take the forms they do, and 2) understand their effects for political and social behavior.” This paper will examine Moe’s question in terms of state environmental agencies: What influences state adoption of a comprehensive environmental structure? To address this question, I develop a theory of state adoption of organizational structure drawing on organizational theories of public organizations. The latest comprehensive examination of state agency structure in the literature …

Determining The Significance Of Alliance Pathologies In Bipolar Systems: A Case Of The Peloponnesian War From 431-421 Bce, Anthony Lee Meyer

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The literature proposes that bipolar systems and international systems with nuclear weapons will not have significant issues with alliance pathologies. But are alliance pathologies really insignificant in Bipolar Systems? The problem is that the literature only describes bipolar systems with nuclear weapons, so one cannot discern whether bipolarity or nuclear weapons alone are responsible for the insignificance of these alliance pathologies. So to solve this problem, this paper will examine a bipolar system in Classical Greece during the time of the Peloponnesian War to isolate any possible influence that nuclear weapons may have on alliance pathologies. This will be done …

Beware Twitter: Trump's Mouth Lies, 2econd Amendment, Risd Archives

Politics

Anti-Trump poster.

Leaders In Search Of The Bomb: Institutional Incentives For Nuclear Decisions, Paige Price Cone

Theses and Dissertations

Nuclear weapons hold a strong allure for many leaders. These weapons are more than tools of national security; rather, they represent international normative symbols of modernity and national identity. This symbolic power presents a strong incentive to proliferate. However, beginning a nuclear weapons program (“proliferating”) is a costly endeavor, one that requires a significant amount of resources and time. A leader who chooses to proliferate must balance the preferences of his or her domestic audience with the significant resources required to proliferate in an international system that opposes nuclear proliferation to new states. In order to understand the paradox of …

Feminist International Relations And “Epistemic Blank Spots”: Entrenching Hegemony?, Jasmine Underwood

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Feminist International Relations (IR) theory and literature critiques the traditional theoretical foundations of international politics, policy, and academia. Viewing the world as a dynamic set of socioeconomic systems and structures, feminists look at the foundations of these institutions, their interactions, and how they impact marginalized groups. Although given that a few of the most prominent feminist International Relations scholars share some of the same socioeconomic and regional roots as their counterparts within mainstream IR, these feminist theorists may have their own sociocultural epistemological issues. Using a critical discourse analysis, this study analyzed if—and how—the background of several leading feminist IR …

Revolutionary Leaders And Mass Killing, Nam Kyu Kim

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

This article argues that revolutionary leaders are more willing to commit mass killing than nonrevolutionary leaders. Revolutionary leaders are more ideologically committed to transforming society, more risk tolerant, and more likely to view the use of violence as appropriate and effective. Furthermore, such leaders tend to command highly disciplined and loyal organizations, built in the course of revolutionary struggles, that can perpetrate mass killing. This study uses time series cross-sectional data from 1955 to 2004 to demonstrate that revolutionary leaders are more likely to initiate genocide or politicide than nonrevolutionary leaders. The violent behaviors of revolutionary leaders are not limited …

Review Of Bargaining For Women’S Rights: Activism In An Aspiring Muslim Democracy By Alice J. Kang, Susanna D. Wing

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Many people consider women’s rights and Muslim democracy as antithetical to each other. Conventional wisdom would have us believe that a Muslim majority country would be an unlikely place to see the adoption of women-friendly policies. In her terrific book, Bargaining for Women’s Rights, Alice Kang dispels this idea through her thoughtful research and richly nuanced analysis of negotiation over women’s rights reforms in Niger. She explains the variation in policy-making in Niger over time and argues that Islam per se is not the fundamental constraint to the adoption of women-friendly policies. Instead, mobilisation for or against policies, and the …