Political Science Commons^™

Political Ideology And American Intergroup Discrimination: A Patriotism Perspective, Crystal L. Hoyt, Aleah Goldin

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

In this research we take the theoretical approach advocated by Greenwald and Pettigrew (2014) and demonstrate the powerful role of ingroup favoritism, rather than hostility, in American intergroup biases. Specifically, we take a novel perspective to understanding the relationship between political ideology and discrimination against ethnic-minority Americans by focusing on the role of patriotism. Across three studies, we show that political ideology is a strong predictor of resource allocation biases and this effect is mediated by American patriotism and not by prejudice or nationalism. Conservatives report greater levels of patriotism than liberals, and patriotism is associated with donating more to …

Learning From Failure: A Review Of Peter Schuck’S Why Government Fails So Often: And How It Can Do Better (Book Review), David M. Levy, Sandra J. Peart

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Peter Schuck catalogs an overwhelming list of US government failures. He points to both structural problems (culture and institutions) and incentives. Despairing of cultural change, Schuck focuses on incentives. He relies on Charles Wolf ’s theory of nonmarket failures in which “internalities” replace the heavily-studied market failure from externalities (Wolf 1979). Internalities are evidence of a discord between the public goals by which a program is defended and the private goals of its administrators. What might economists contribute? We suggest that economists have neglected internalities because they take group goals as exogenously determined and we defend an alternative tradition in …

Political Intolerance In The 21st Century: The Role Of Ideology And Emotion In Determining Intolerant Judgments, Matthew Cain

Masters Theses

Decades of research in Social Psychology have demonstrated that political intolerance is not displayed equally with respect to ideology. In particular, conservatives and those with right-wing beliefs are much more likely to display intolerant judgments than those with liberal or left-wing beliefs. This "prejudice gap" has been found to be so ubiquitous that it is now the conventional wisdom regarding the relationship between ideology and intolerance. However, a small, but growing literature challenges this presumed ideological asymmetry and has instead found that liberals and conservatives display intolerance under certain circumstances. Synthesizing the recent research showing ideological symmetry in intolerance judgments, …

Gendered Pathways To Office For Members Of The 112th U.S. House Of Representatives, Samantha Sarich

Masters Theses

Research both asserts that there is a particular path through careers in either business or law that many political candidates take to Congress and that female candidates do not always follow this standard path. Female candidates have been found to emerge from a wider array of experiences outside of business and law. Differences in pathways male and female candidates take to public office have been widely studied, yet little attention has been focused on whether or not female candidates having experience serving on the board of a non-profit organizations can be a part of a viable alternate pathway to public …

From The Jungles Of Washington To The Wilderness Of America: The Effects Of Federal Grants On Wildlife Conservation In The States, Kayla Samuelson

Masters Theses

This thesis research looks at whether federal grant award dollars influence state spending on wildlife conservation. Partisan control of the state legislatures also is examined to see if Democratic-controlled, Republican-controlled, and Split-Party Status affects spending on wildlife conservation. Five states were chosen to represent major regions in the United States and to serve as case studies of wildlife conservation spending patterns. The Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program is used as a case study to investigate whether funds received by states affected state government spending on wildlife conservation. The research finds that the amount of money allocated to states does not affect …

A Generational Perspective On The Development Of The Political History Of Modern Iran, Gregory Mcdowall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mark Twain once remarked, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." If such recurrences happen with some discernible periodicity it would support the view that society develops cyclically. Though still controversial, this perspective has found a home in the long wave cycle theories of economics and international relations. For decades, international relation theorists have argued over which factor has primarily driven the interstate system, but this paradigm transforms that debate into a query over which of them serves as the medium for carrying waves of social change, be it war, trade, class, or gender relations. William Strauss and Neil …

Reconciling Ex Ante Expectations With The Ex Post Reality: A Look At The Effectiveness Of Third-Party Diplomatic Interventions In Civil Wars, Matthew Benchimol

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research has begun to focus on the role third-party diplomatic intervention plays in the length of civil conflicts. Diplomatic interventions by a third-party actor are assumed to help resolve or alleviate violence over time. Is this really the case? Hypotheses relating to these aspects of civil wars are proposed to test this long-standing assumption. This thesis uses statistical analysis to observe the relationship between diplomatic interventions and civil war duration and then observe the relationship between duration and civil war violence. The data incorporates approximately 150 civil wars from 1945 to 1999, 101 of which had outside interventions. This thesis …

How Much Is That War In The Window? An Investigation Into The Costs Of War, Spencer Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the effects of war on a state's economy. The Liberal Theory of international relations maintains that there are costs to war in terms of trade; in line with this argument, many researchers have suggested that trading partners are less likely to war with each other out of a fear of disrupting their trade, which would in turn disrupt their economies. Due to issues of elasticity and substitution, however, overall trade may not significantly decline during war. Additionally, there are known economic costs of war, such as debt. If war truly does have costs, then, it must be …

Welcome To The Club: Igo Socialization And Dyadic Arms Transfers, Joseph Dimino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines whether intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) can socialize member states by testing the effect of shared IGO memberships on dyadic arms transfers. IGO socialization is one of many proposed causal mechanisms by which IGO memberships might reduce interstate conflict. This thesis argues that the institutional socialization hypothesis (ISH), which asserts that shared IGO memberships will lead to interest convergence between member states, uses an invalid conceptualization and measurement of socialization. Instead, socialization is re-conceptualized as increased trust between member states, and re-operationalized using dyadic arms transfers as a proxy for trust. The study uses linear regression with cross-sectional panel …

An Empirical Analysis Of The Association Between Types Of Interventions And Civil War Onset, Melinda Mellott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Quantitative studies have focused on economics, social structures, and lack of political freedoms as being elemental factors for civil war onset. However, these studies have neglected the possibility of a civil war being an unintended consequence of international military intervention. I conduct an empirical analysis of the association between military intervention and civil war onset by collecting data for twenty countries within the Middle East/North African regions from 1980 to 2000. Using the International Military Intervention data set, I categorized “international intervention” into nine different types, all of which were regressed with intrastate war data derived from the Correlates of …

Conflicting Thoughts: The Effect Of Information On Support For An Increase In The Federal Minimum Wage Level, Joshua Cooper, Alejandra Gimenez

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

In March 2014, President Obama urged Congress to approve a minimum wage hike from $7.25 to $10.10. As expected, a debate sparked from both sides of the aisle about whether it should be increased at all and if the proposed jump was too large. Following this debate, a flurry of public opinion polls entered the field to measure how Americans felt on this issue. Research firms from the Washington Post to Pew fielded basic surveys asking how Americans felt about the potential wage hike. However, none of them looked at how the levels of information about the minimum wage increase …

Research Project: Children In Agriculture, Rachel Milliron

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

The concept of the “American dream” lures many immigrants to the U.S. each year. Patterns of immigration to the U.S. throughout history may be categorized into waves, including major waves from Asia, Europe, and Latin America (Nelli 1987: 200–01). American industries have welcomed and capitalized from the influx of cheap labor in the workforce. The agricultural industry employs many immigrants, and, more specifically, child immigrants or children of immigrants (Human Rights Watch 2014a). The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 exempts minors in agricultural jobs from the maximum-hour and the minimum-age requirements that apply to other working minors (Human Rights …

Back Cover

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of The Predictive Ability Of Political Psychological Theory: A Case Study Of President Clinton’S Behavior In Bosnia, Madeline Ary

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

Why does the U.S. sometimes choose to intervene in international conflicts? Can the political decisions of a leader be profiled? In order to address these questions, this study analyzes the case study of the Bosnian civil war and the decisions President Bill Clinton made to escalate intervention measures in the region until the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995. To accomplish this analysis, the psychological theory of international relations, specifically operational code theory, will be applied. Overall, this analysis concludes that the psychological and instrumental beliefs held by President Clinton had an impact on U.S. foreign policy pertaining to Bosnia.

Trust And Scandal: A Tale Of Two Theories, James Martherus

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

“I am not a crook.” Those five words are burned into the nation’s memory. President Nixon was under investigation after five men were arrested trying to break into the Watergate office complex, where the Democratic National Committee was headquartered. Evidence was found that the burglary was funded using money from Nixon’s re-election campaign. This led to cover-ups at high levels within the FBI, CIA, and the White House. Nixon was implicated in these cover-ups and was eventually charged with obstruction of justice, abuse of authority, and defiance of committee subpoenas. It was then that Nixon uttered the infamous phrase, “I …

Letter From The Editor, Alan Hickey Editor-In-Chief

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

No abstract provided.

United States—Chile Bilateral Free Trade Act, Jake Berlin

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

Since the formation of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) in 1947, world trade has increased exponentially, leading to unprecedented economic growth and prosperity throughout the world. The elimination of nontariff barriers (NTB’s) and the reduction of tariffs throughout the world have allowed world trade and wealth to flow effectively from one country to another guided by the “invisible hand” of economic liberalism. The Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations, which led to the creation of a formal World Trade Organization (WTO), was seen by many as evidence pointing to continued progress toward trade liberalization throughout the world. In …

The Iconography Of The Turkish Lira, David Covey

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

This is an original manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Southeast European and Black Sea Studies on 4 April 2022, available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2022.2054171.

Turkey seems to forever be at a balancing point—between East and West, secular and Muslim, autocratic and liberal, ancient and modern. As a rising economic power in a region plagued by turmoil, it has enormous strategic importance as both a center of power and a model for others. Pulled in multiple directions by its diverse population, few outcomes seem implausible for Turkey. In the coming decades, it could become a model …

Gender, Corruption, And Culture: Evidence From The American States, Luke Bell

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

In recent years, several influential studies have reported that high levels of female representation in national legislatures seem to correspond with low levels of countrywide corruption. Scholars have expressed excitement at the prospect that simply adding women to government will “diminish the need for a painful, expensive, and politically difficult process of rooting out corruption via oversight and prosecution” (Esarey and Chirillo 2013: 364). Some governments have launched initiatives to increase the number of women in positions of public responsibility as a means of combating corrupt behavior. Peru, for example, recently created an allwomen police division in an attempt to …

Sigma 2015

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

No abstract provided.