Political Theory Commons^™

Kennan And The Neglected Variable In Post-Socialist Societies: The Loss Of Honest Dialogue And The Need For Empathy, Joan Davison

Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes the symbolism of George Kennan’s famous “X” article relative to the challenges of contemporary post transitions. It unpacks recent political discourse, discussing the critical application of practices such as thinking with your heart, parrhesis of the significance of uncertainty and reflection for question is: What would Kennan write in an X Article to states in transition paper employs both the definition suggested by Michel Foucault who understood it as “fearless speech” and Eric Voegelin who closely follows Plato’s meaning linking it with “heart” (dis)order of representatives of a society.

Scriptural Justification For The American Revolution, Samuel Ewing

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis will seek to examine the intention of the Founding Fathers regarding their decision to break from England in what became the American Revolution. On July 4^th, 1776, fifty-five men gathered to sign the defining document of their cause – the Declaration of Independence. As the document presents the climactic argument against the English crown, this thesis will seek to analyze its writers’ intentions, presuppositions, and rationalizations. Ultimately, this thesis will demonstrate that the Founders not only sought biblical justification for their actions and opinions, but followed the letter of biblical and common law in order to …

Ideological Independence In The American Political Experiment, John S. Connor, C.M.

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Research Offers Tough Love To Improve Human Rights Practices, Joel Pruce

Political Science Faculty Publications

We know what it means to practice a skill such as juggling or dancing, but what does it mean to "practice" human rights?

Contributions to OpenGlobalRights (OGR), since its inception, have gravitated around critique of human rights practices by focusing on advocacy and activism, cultivating debates that address the contemporary dilemmas facing human rights movements worldwide. The launch of OGR four years ago is a symptom of what I’ve referred to elsewhere as a “practice turn” in the scholarly field of human rights—one that takes human rights practice as its subject, forges space for scholar-practitioner collaboration and communication, and focuses …

Gay And Lesbian Candidates, Group Stereotypes, And The News Media: An Experimental Design (Lgbtq Politics: A Critical Reader), Mandi Bates Bailey, Steven P. Nawara

Political Science Faculty Books/Book Chapters

From Harvey Milk to ACT UP to Proposition 8, no political change in the last two decades has been as rapid as the advancement of civil rights for LGBTQ people. As we face a critical juncture in progressive activism, political science, which has been slower than most disciplines to study the complexity of queer politics, must grapple with the shifting landscape of LGBTQ rights and inclusion.

LGBTQ Politics analyzes both the successes and obstacles to building the LGBTQ movement over the past twenty years, offering analyses that point to possibilities for the movement’s future. Essays cover a range of topics, …

Bargaining Theory, Civil War Outcomes, And War Recurrence: Assessing The Results Of Empirical Tests Of The Theory, Caroline A. Hartzell

Political Science Faculty Publications

Once ended, a significant number of civil wars recur. One influential empirical international relations theory on which scholars have drawn in an effort to provide an explanation for this phenomenon is the bargaining model of war. Devised initially for the study of interstate war, the theory posits that bargaining problems may prevent belligerents from reaching a deal that enables them to avoid a costly war. Bargaining problems also have been identified as contributing to the recurrence of armed intrastate conflict. Working within the framework of bargaining theory, a number of scholars have claimed that the most effective way to inhibit …

Liberal Translations: Secular Concepts, Law, And Religion In Colonial Egypt, Jeffrey Culang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a conceptual history of Egypt’s national formation between the 1880s and the 1930s. This period involved the convergence of nationalism, colonial rule, missionary activity, and new modes of governance at the national and international levels. Drawing on state and missionary archival material, periodicals, legal compendia, laws, and parliamentary transcripts, and adapting methods developed by Reinhart Koselleck, I trace shifts within Egypt’s socio-political lexicon through processes of translation and demonstrate their effects upon social experience and political aspiration. I focus on a set of liberal-secular concepts critical to national politics—religious freedom, public interest, nationality, and the minority—as they …

The Bourgeois Crown: Capitalism And The Monarchy In Thailand, 1946–2016, Puangchon Unchanam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the age of capitalism, monarchy has been treated as if it were an irrelevant institution. Once capitalism becomes the dominant mode of production in a state, it is argued, monarchy must be either abolished or transformed into a constitutional monarchy, a ceremonial institution that plays no significant role in a capitalist state that is ruled by the bourgeoisie. The monarchy of Thailand, however, fits neither of those two narratives, as it enjoys hegemonic status in the capitalist state, preeminent status in the market, and popular support from the urban bourgeoisie. What explains the resilience of the Thai monarchy in …

The New American Slavery: Capitalism And The Ghettoization Of American Prisons As A Profitable Corporate Business, David A. Liburd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The labor of enslaved Africans and Black Americans played a large part in the history of colonial America, with the American plantation being the epicenter for all that was to be produced. While the two have never been completely tied together, capitalism and modern day slavery have been linked with one another. Some analysis sees slavery as a remote form of capitalism, a substitute, to an antiquated form of labor in the modern world.

Slave plantations adopted a new concentration in size and management, referred to by W.E. DuBois as a change "from a family institution to an industrial system."1 …

Quentin Skinner, The Foundations Of Modern Political Thought, Donald J. Herzog

Book Chapters

"In The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Quentin Skinner has three aims: creating a sort of reference book for hundreds of primary texts in multiple languages, illuminating a more general historical theme using late medieval and early modern political texts, and giving us a history of political thought with a genuinely historical character. Skinner allows us to see political theorists creatively wrestling with difficult political problems of their day, and attempting to solve them through their writing. Skinner’s critics, however, cannot shake the sense that placing these texts in historical contexts robs them of some of their profundity and value …

Civic Tenderness: Love's Role In Achieving Justice, Justin Leonard Clardy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Martha Nussbaum’s work Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice identifies the role that compassion plays in motivating citizens in a just society. I expand on this discussion by considering how attitudes of indifference pose a challenge to the extension of compassion in our society. If we are indifferent to others who are in situations of need, we are not equipped to experience compassion for them. Building on Nussbaum’s account, I develop an analytic framework for the public emotion of Civic Tenderness to combat indifference.

Civic tenderness is an orientation of concern that is generated for people and groups that …

Utilizing Title Vi As A Means To Eradicate Health Discrimination, Adrian D. Samuels, Mariah L. Cole

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

Health disparities among people of color are persistent and detrimental to the overall wellness of these groups. Discrimination in the provision of health care services is one of the primary causes of health disparities. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s availability as a tool to prevent discrimination and, in turn, disparities among these groups is underdocumented. The legislative intent of Title VI and the historical context of the law have been helpful in its use outside of the health care arena to prevent discrimination. This sheds light on the ways that the law can influence the health …

Liberal-Democratic States Should Privilege Parental Efforts To Instill Identities And Values, Andrew M. Robinson

Political Science Faculty Publications

Liberal-democratic states’ commitments to equality and personal autonomy have always proven problematic with respect to state regulation of relations between parents and children. In the parental authority literature positions have varied from invoking children’s interests to argue for limitations on parental efforts to instill identities and values to invoking parental rights to justify state privileging of such efforts.

This article argues that liberal-democratic states should privilege parental efforts to raise their children to share their identities and values. Its approach is distinctive in two ways: i) it engages in interdisciplinary reflection upon selected findings in psychological literature on immigrant youth, …

Barriers To Empowerment: How Can Gender Equality Training Reduce The Barriers That Women Farmers Face In Nicaragua?, Krista Pelletier

Capstone Collection

Women farmers worldwide face difficulties, unrelated to men, in their control over and access to resources and participation within farming systems. In Nicaragua, women are legally allowed to own land and participate in cooperatives, however, due to social, political, and economic factors they face barriers in their equitable access to resources and participation. Feminist political ecology theorizes that gender plays a key role and determines access to knowledge and resources, additionally, gender motivates people to social and political activism differently, which in effect shapes human-environment interactions. Can women, women’s groups, and NGO’s find ways to reduce the barriers women face …

The Cross-Cultural Experiences Of Saudi Sojourners In The United States: A Study Of Intrapersonal Identity Conflict, Ahmed M. Asfahani Ph.D.

Journal of Interdisciplinary Conflict Science

What are the cross-cultural experiences of Saudi sojourners studying in the United States that lead to intrapersonal identity conflict? Sojourner identity conflict is a foundational issue in culture shock and can promote or limit positive relationships between Saudi and American students. It is important to study Saudi sojourners’ cultural backgrounds and the factors that inhibit or promote assimilation into their host culture to ensure the success of cultural exchange through providing data needed to learn how to best ameliorate the dissonance caused by identity conflict. By employing a phenomenological approach, this research provides findings relating to acculturation strategies of sojourners …

Liberalism Or Immigration Restrictions, But Not Both, Christopher Freiman, Javier S. Hidalgo

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

This paper argues for a dilemma: you can accept liberalism or immigration restrictions, but not both. More specifically, the standard arguments for restricting freedom of movement apply equally to textbook liberal freedoms, such as freedom of speech, religion, occupation and reproductive choice. We begin with a sketch of liberalism’s core principles and an argument for why freedom of movement is plausibly on a par with other liberal freedoms. Next we argue that, if a state’s right to self-determination grounds a prima facie right to restrict immigration, then it also grounds a prima facie right to restrict freedom of speech, religion, …

Sloan On Geopolitics, Geography, And Strategy History In Geopolitics, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Geopolitical literature is experiencing a renaissance and scholars representing classical and critical perspectives in this field bring multifaceted assessments to historical and current international political and security issues. Sloan’s Geopolitics, Geography and Strategic History, which is part of Routledge’s Geopolitical Theory Series, examines connections between geography, strategy, and history and is the subject of this review and analysis. Three thesis questions examined by the author include why the geographical scope of political objectives and following strategies of nation states change, how do these changes occur, and over what time period do these changes occur. Sloan examines why the geopolitical theories …

Pulse - A Consultation, Barry J. Mauer

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured 53 at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. We may never know or understand what was in Mateen’s mind, but we can situate his attack within the history of eliminationism in America. Islamist terrorism is just part of a larger phenomenon: right wing eliminationism. But despite centuries of right wing eliminationist words and deeds in the U.S., there is little or no mainstream recognition of the phenomenon. Instead, we are treated to more denial, more distraction, more obfuscation. Until we look this problem squarely in the face, it will …

History And Politics In The Thought Of Karl Jaspers, Nathan Wallace

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A relatively overlooked but important work, The Origin and Goal of History, by Karl Jaspers is examined with regard the intellectual history of its development and influence, and its structure and prospects for contemporary and future relevance for political theory. Emphasis is placed on the argument that the central aspect of the work has been neglected in recent, important literature: its connection of a universal historical narrative with a theory of contemporary politics.

Thine Is The Kingdom: The Political Thought Of 21st Century Evangelicalism, Joanna Tice Jen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite renewed attention to religion and ethics in political theory, there is a notable absence of inquiry into evangelicalism. Social scientists have studied Christian right policy in the late 20th century, but how has the movement shifted in the new millennium and what are the theoretical beliefs that undergird those shifts? By reading popular devotional writings as political texts, this dissertation distills a three-part evangelical political thought: 1) a theory of time in which teleological eternity complements retroactive re-birth; 2) a theory of being wherein evangelicals learn to strive after their godly potential through a process of emotional self-regulation; and …