Political Theory Commons^™

Restricted At Home, Impeded Abroad: A Study Of Domestic Human Rights Practices And Women’S Global Economic Power, Cameron Elizabeth Cheatham

Honors College Theses

To what extent does the practice of human rights as universal or culturally relative impact women’s status in the global economy? While there is already evidence to show how women have less power in countries that practice culturally relative human rights, this study aims to explore how the domestic practice of human rights influences women’s global power through an analysis of women’s financial inclusion. Using a cross-national, quantitative analysis, I show that human rights practices in the domestic arena directly impact the economic power of women in the global economy. When human rights practices at home are more universal in …

Political Economy Of The Middle East: Historiography And The Making Of An Episteme, Jordan Rothschild

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

The Great Divergence accelerated a process of Western European states dominating the majority of the world’s geography and people economically and geopolitically. Given the stakes of this shift and its ramifications for all of the history that followed, and the significant way that the divide continues to shape our world, this phenomenon is subject to considerable debate within the historiography. This paper uses the Great Divergence as a departure point to analyze the different schools of political economic history, from the flawed sociologies of the early 20th century theorists to the World Systems Theorists and beyond. A key aspect of …

The Fall And Rise Of Bengali Muslim Conciousness: Conceptualising The Identity Of The Bangla Universal, Habib Khan

Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of modern-nation states saw the end of the empirical era of exploitation and exercise of inherent racist tendencies towards the 'other'. However, the effect of that colonial system is still ever-present in the creation and governance of these newly independent states. While every new state aims to be 'modern', they adopt the international legal framework of the West as their own - a system they had initially wanted to escape. The concept of Muslim universality in the form of the ummah should have freed Pakistan from the shackles of its former colonial masters. Instead, this phenomenon was replaced …

Poverty Rate Inequality: Analyzing The Causes Of The Larger Difference In The Poverty Rates Between Black And White Americans In Philadelphia And New York City, Patrick Carney

Gettysburg College Headquarters

This paper purports to find a cause for the larger differences in poverty rates between black and white Americans in Philadelphia and the same two groups in New York City. Three hypotheses, the education spending per student hypothesis, the economic hypothesis, and the social spending per capita hypothesis, are each respectively devised to explain these differences in the respective poverty rates. The education spending per student and social spending per capita hypotheses are tested using data from each city, leading to the conclusion that the lower social and education spending per capita in Philadelphia when compared to New York City …

Good State, Bad State: Gender, Multiculturalism And Religious Law In India, Rina V. Williams

Future Journal of Social Science

What role(s) can the state play when cultural rights come into conflict with women’s rights? This article compares conceptions of the state in the normative literature against two empirical cases of multicultural debate in modern India: Islamic law in the 1980s and Hindu law in the 1950s. I find that three conceptions of the state found in the normative literature—oppressive, facilitative, and vacated states—are only partially supported in the empirical cases, which proffer some support for the state as oppressive, but little or none for the state as facilitative or vacated. They also indicate a fourth model …

Liquid Border, Yingfan Jia

Masters Theses

A River is a mighty and constantly-evolving force, leaving behind an intricately designed and constantly changing system. Not just a river, the Rio Grande stretches all the way from Colorado before intersecting with the US-Mexico Border in southern Texas - a point where the powerful forces of nature now merge with a clearly-defined political boundary. The outcome of this is a unique ecological niche, which may often go unnoticed despite its distinctiveness.

Texas is famous for its farms and ranches, and the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas was once an agricultural hub. However, urbanization and the depletion of water …

The Collapse Of The Afghan State And Its Relation To Us Policy, Omar Saradi

University Honors Theses

The main inspiration for this has been down to my curiosity of my heritage. The events described, particularly in the 1970's, were things that were contemporary to my family, and the escape from Afghanistan as refugee was an experience that was firsthand for my dad--who escaped in 1979 to Pakistan to claim refugee status in the US. One of the things that struck me the most in his story of escaping on foot with a group of villagers, was that the centers for refugees in Pakistan were not the cleanest and housed a crowded room of people who were stuck …

Justice And Meaningful Work, Caleb Althorpe

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis argues the widespread promotion of meaningful work can be an important part of a liberal theory of justice that takes nonperfectionism seriously. I begin with a conceptual argument and defend what I call the ‘contributive view’ of meaningful work, which characterizes work as meaningful when it is complex enough to be person-engaging for the worker and involves them in the contributive aspects of the work process. I then turn to the normative argument and claim that undertaking meaningful work so regarded is a social basis of self-respect, for two reasons. First, because it’s connected through reciprocity to the …

What Was David Cameron Thinking? Thoughts Of A British Prime Minister Regarding Brexit, Tímea Varga

Journal of Global Awareness

The aim of my research is to examine what David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was thinking all the way through the process of the UK’s secession from the European Union: why he made certain decisions and what influenced him. In order to do that, I use speeches, parliamentary debates, and memoirs, including several interviews with the former PM. The research methodology primarily uses the tools of discourse analysis: I examine the semantic elements, words, sentences and other characteristics of the political discourse, paying attention to the strategic structure of speech modes.

By interpreting his political thinking and …

Economics Over All: How Neoliberalism Affects Our Paradigms Of Identity And Relationships In The 21st Century, Richard R. Murphy

2023 Symposium

Not much is more heavily debated in the realm of social sciences than the phenomenon of Neoliberalism. Philosophers and academics alike, from the lectures by Michel Foucault in the latter half of the 20th century, to the publications of David Harvey and Wendy Brown today, the only constant is that Neoliberalism is a complex and nuanced system of internal governmentality. These fundamental changes to our paradigms trigger an evolved adaptively plastic mechanism that regulates our inclusive and exclusive moralities. By analyzing the mechanic structure of Neoliberalism and how it changes our paradigms of identity and relations, we may begin to …

Plato's Republics: A Dramatic Interpretation Of The Early Cities In Plato's "Republic", Simeon Burns

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation will demonstrate a new methodological approach to reading Plato’s Republic. I develop and apply a dramatic, dynamic hermeneutic to Book II and part of Book III in the text. This method holds that each speech is the product of a preceding agreement or disagreement between two speakers. Agreements lead to the argument’s advancement and disagreements result in a regression to a previous agreement from which to restart the exchange. The focus section is largely on the early exchange Socrates has with Adeimantus. I argue that Socrates is an unwilling participant in the famous discussion on the meaning …

The Value Of Your Life By The Numbers Crowdfunded Medical Debt, Grayson Highsmith

The Commons: Puget Sound Journal of Politics

For centuries, components of culture from Pacific Island States have been commodified in various forms of media within the cultural tourism industry. In recent years, though these media representations have shifted away from encouraging direct colonial exploitation, cultural tourism efforts still pose complicated questions about the amount of agency Polynesian individuals have how they are represented. While tourism is a significant sector of the economy in Pacific Islands Countries (PICs), it’s important to consider whether or not Polynesian people have the economic and social freedoms to influence how they share their culture rather than having it be offered up for …

Tourism And Cultural Commodification In The Polynesian Island-State Economies, Sowmya Kannan

The Commons: Puget Sound Journal of Politics

For centuries, components of culture from Pacific Island States have been commodified in various forms of media within the cultural tourism industry. In recent years, though these media representations have shifted away from encouraging direct colonial exploitation, cultural tourism efforts still pose complicated questions about the amount of agency Polynesian individuals have how they are represented. While tourism is a significant sector of the economy in Pacific Islands Countries (PICs), it’s important to consider whether or not Polynesian people have the economic and social freedoms to influence how they share their culture rather than having it be offered up for …

Political Bias In Large Language Models, Lucas Gover

The Commons: Puget Sound Journal of Politics

Recent research has found that large language models consistently capture and replicate undesirable societal biases relating to race, religion, and gender. However, political bias is not well explored. This study investigates the political bias present in the state-of-the-art large language model GPT-3. To investigate political bias, I apply Natural Language Processing techniques to develop a political sentiment analysis model. Using this model, I analyze the ideological bias present in political essays written by GPT-3, finding that GPT-3 has a moderate left-leaning bias and tends to replicate the ideological bias of prompt text.

The Panamanian Puzzle Successful Democratization And Foreign-Imposed Regime Change, Paige Saller

The Commons: Puget Sound Journal of Politics

Panama represents one of the only modern success stories of foreign-imposed regime change (FIRC) following Operation Just Cause, a military intervention led by the United States to remove Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. Literature on foreign military interventions as a whole traditionally suggests that FIRC is not effective long-term in countries trying to democratize. Panama’s democratization therefore represents a puzzle in why it has succeeded where so many others failed. This puzzle is compounded by the fact that Panama’s transition has not received much attention from political scientists despite Latin America generally being of interest to FIRC scholars. This paper posits …

Cuban Embargo: An Insufficient Measure To Encourage Us Foreign Policy Interests, Esme Jm Prowse

Major Papers

This major paper examines the Cuban embargo as an ineffective hard power policy and explores the potential of soft, hard, and smart power as alternative approaches to resolve the failures of the 60-year-old blockade. The paper analyzes the historical context and rationale behind the embargo and assesses its impact on Cuban-American relations, regional stability, and U.S. national interests. The study argues that the embargo has failed to achieve its intended goals and has instead perpetuated a cycle of hostility, isolation, and human rights abuses. By drawing on the theoretical frameworks of soft, hard, and smart power, the paper presents policy …

Deliberative Facilitation In The Classroom: The Interplay Of Facilitative Technique And Design To Make Space For Democracy, Kei Nishiyama, A. Wendy Russell, Pierrick Chalaye, Tom Greenwell

Democracy and Education

Widespread global interest and adoption of deliberative democracy approaches to reinvigorate citizenship and policymaking in an era of democratic crisis/decline has been mirrored by increasing interest in deliberation in schools, both as an approach to pedagogy and student empowerment and as a training ground for deliberative citizenship. In school deliberation, as in other settings, a key and sometimes neglected element of high-quality deliberation is facilitation. Facilitation can help to establish and maintain deliberative norms, assist participants to deliberate productively, and enable collective goals. By participating in facilitated deliberation, students can develop awareness, skills, and voice that empower them to engage …

Tribal Statecraft And Freedom Of Expression In Jordan, Taylor Northcutt

Honors Theses

In this research paper, I investigate the connection between the policies regarding freedom of speech and expression promulgated by the government of Jordan in the decade following the Arab Spring and Jordan’s tribal Bedouin heritage, with a focus on how traditional Bedouin values and attitudes regarding the nature and purpose of public spaces influence modern state policies regarding freedom of expression. In the investigation of this subject, I surveyed a diverse catalog of research covering politics and issues of freedom of expression in Jordan in the 2010s as well as the political and social values of tribal Arab culture in …

The Departure From The Original Intent Of The 14th Amendment, Johnny B. Davis

Helm's School of Government Conference

No abstract provided.

Eugenics Not Eradication: How People With Disabilities Have Lost The Right To Life, Ava Standish

Helm's School of Government Conference

Disability-selective abortion stems from a eugenical philosophy not a hope of eradication. Disabilities cannot be eradicated because they are not diseases. Eugenics seeks to purify society from those who are considered “inferior” and to encourage the rate of births considered “superior.” Eugenics continues today through selective abortion of children with disabilities. These children deserve the right to life guaranteed by natural rights, human rights, and the laws of the United States. Children with disabilities, particularly Down Syndrome, have lost this right to life in the United States and abroad. In the United States, 67% of children with Down Syndrome are …