Description: This paper discusses research on the first World War. Abstract: In 1917 when President Woodrow Wilson asked the U.S. Congress for a declaration of war against Germany, he promised that the Great War would be the "war to end all wars." Unfortunately, this idealistic promise was more than anyone could deliver. My research focuses on the influences that shaped President Wilson's idealism and how he expanded his ideals in persuading the American public to go to war. I refer to opinion and editorial sections from major newspapers across America to determine and demonstrate the degree of Wilson's idealism in public addresses and the general public response to his views. My research offers an explanation and an assessment of Wilson's idealism, including its expansion and significance in U.S. foreign policy since 1917.

Description: This paper discusses a longitudinal analysis of public opinion in Costa Rica from 2004-2008. Abstract: This study analyzes in a longitudinal context the dimensional conceptualization of legitimacy set forth by Booth and Seligson in 'The Legitimacy Puzzle in Latin America,' in which they found that legitimacy was composed of six different dimensions: regime institutions, regime principles, local government, political actors, political community, and regime performance. This study first tests whether the evaluation level of each dimension of legitimacy remains constant. The second part of this study tests whether the dimensional structure of legitimacy remains stable over time using 2004 and 2008 Costa Rica Survey data, identifying issues that researchers who conduct longitudinal studies under this dimensional framework should address in order to yield empirically valid results, and challenging assumptions made in recent longitudinal studies.

Description: This paper discusses research on the factors affecting the rate of execution in the state in the Texas. Abstract: The Supreme Court of the United States, in Furman v. Georgia (1972), invalidated death penalty statutes across the country because offenders, under existing laws, were vulnerable to capricious sentencing. Despite attempts by states to reduce arbitrariness in the three decades since 'Furman' (1972), extra legal factors, particularly race, continue to influence every phase of capital punishment from the indictment to the sentence. The Court, in McCleskey v. Kemp (1987), refused to consider widespread racial bias as reason to overturn an individual's death sentence, but directed statistical analysts towards state legislators to affect change. In this paper, the author examines the effects of legal and extra legal factors to see if they continue to influence decision makers after the verdict. Specifically, the author examines the relationship between race of the offenders and race of the victims to see if that relationship is correlated with the length of time between conviction and execution. The author also considers the effects of the victim's cause of death, the reason the offender was eligible for the death penalty, and the nature of the relationship between the ...

Description: This paper discusses research on for-profit and nonprofit microfinance and how the poor are affected. Abstract: Of the world's 6.5 billion people, 2.8 billion are living in poverty on less than $2 per day. After a general discussion of poverty among several perspectives, this research will focus on the microfinance industry. Microfinance has proven itself an effective poverty alleviation tool. Traditionally, the microfinance industry has been nonprofit, geared toward helping the poor rise from poverty through the provision of small loans to create or expand businesses. The need for additional funding capital and the growing popularity of the industry have spurred an industry-wide debate between the traditional nonprofit model and newer for-profit microfinance model ideals. Many social and economic trade-offs occur on the spectrum that shifts between these two models. As this industry continues to transform itself rapidly, this study works to explain the major points of the debate within the context of two microfinance institutions from both models (i.e., Alternativa Solidaria and Compartamos). Although there were several limitations such as time and funding, this paper offers ideas of how each might overcome their inadequacies in the future to find a stronger balance between funding, satisfying the market demand for ...