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open access

Administering Social Reform in a Federal System: The Case of the Office for Civil Rights

Description: The purpose of this study is to explore the administrative setting of the Office for Civil Rights, treating especially the functional requisites of agencies: namely, the development of a viable role within its set and the internal necessity of developing among its functionaries a degree of cohesion and sense of common purpose. This case study is designed, moreover, to challenge the naturalistic assumptions of the pluralist model of administrative theory. Chapter I develops the theme of "social … more
Date: August 1974
Creator: Thompson, Gary E.
open access

Agenda-Setting by Minority Political Groups: A Case Study of American Indian Tribes

Description: This study tested theoretical propositions concerning agenda-setting by minority political groups in the United States to see if they had the scope to be applicable to American Indian tribes or if there were alternative explanations for how this group places its agenda items on the formal agenda and resolves them. Indian tribes were chosen as the case study because they are of significantly different legal and political status than other minority groups upon which much of the previous research … more
Date: May 1990
Creator: McCoy, Leila M. (Leila Melanie)
open access

An Analysis of Media, Social, and Political Influences on Time of Voting Decision in Presidential Elections, 1952-1976

Description: Early voting studies before television predominance determined that mass media had a "limited effect" on American voting behavior. This work reassesses the limited-effects notion. The thesis is that the mass media do have significant impact on voting decisions. A trend study, the work utilizes the Center for Political Studies national presidential election surveys 1952-1976, and multiple regression analysis to examine the impact of media, social, and political variables on the dependent variabl… more
Date: December 1981
Creator: Garrison, G. David (Glenn David)
open access

An Analysis of Voting Patterns in Mobile, Alabama, 1948-1970

Description: The purpose of this thesis is to examine the voting trends in Mobile, Alabama, which have developed since 1948; particular emphasis is placed upon the role of the Negro vote in Mobile politics before and after the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Date: May 1973
Creator: Voyles, James Everett, 1943-
open access

Appellate Recruitment Patterns in the Higher British Judiciary: 1850 - 1990

Description: This study seeks to advance the understanding of appellate promotion in the senior judiciary of Great Britain . It describes the population and attributes of judges who served in the British High Courts, Court of Appeal, and Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (i.e., Law Lords) from 1850 to 1990. It specifically builds upon the work of C. Neal Tate and tests his model of appellate recruitment on a larger and augmented database. The study determines that family status, previously asser… more
Date: December 2004
Creator: Thomas, Bruce K.
open access

A Black/Non-Black Theory of African-American Partisanship: Hostility, Racial Consciousness and the Republican Party

Description: Why is black partisan identification so one-sidedly Democratic forty years past the Civil Rights movement? A black/non-black political dichotomy manifests itself through one-sided African-American partisanship. Racial consciousness and Republican hostility is the basis of the black/non-black political dichotomy, which manifests through African-American partisanship. Racial consciousness forced blacks to take a unique and somewhat jaundiced approach to politics and Republican hostility to black … more
Date: May 2006
Creator: King, Marvin
open access

Canadian Supreme Court Decision-making, 1875-1990 : Institutional, Group, and Individual Level Perspectives

Description: Since its creation in 1875, the Canadian Supreme Court has undergone several institutional transitions. These transitions have changed the role of the Court toward a more explicit and influential policy making role in the country. Despite this increasingly significant role, very limited attention has been given to the Court. With this perspective in mind, this study presents several analyses on the decision making process of the Canadian Supreme Court. At the institutional level, the study foun… more
Date: May 1994
Creator: Sittiwong, Panu
open access

Clenching the Fists of Dissent: Political Unrest, Repression, and the Evolution to Civil War

Description: Previous scholarship has long concentrated on the behaviors of belligerents during regime-dissident interactions. While much of the progress in the literature concentrated on the micro-level processes of this relationship, little research has focused on providing a theoretical reasoning on why belligerents choose to act in a particular manner. This project attempts to open the black box of decision making for regimes and dissidents during regime-dissident interactions in order to provide a theo… more
Date: August 2016
Creator: Backstrom, Jeremy R.
open access

Collaboration among Conflict Management Practitioners and Human Rights Advocacy Groups

Description: In a civil war, conflict management practitioners are concerned with bringing the conflict to an end and providing security for civilians. Similarly, human rights advocacy groups are also concerned with minimizing civilian harm. Given the similar intentions of these actors in civil war states, this dissertation explores under what circumstances conflict management practitioners and human rights advocacy groups collaborate. First, I compare to what extent mediation and peacekeeping cases differ… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: Akyol, Seyma N.
open access

A Comparative Study of Terrorism in Southwest Asia 1968-1982

Description: This study assumes that political terrorism results from conscious decision-making by groups opposing a governing system, policy or process. The kinds of terrorist activity employed depend upon such factors as the philosophy, goals, objectives, and needs of the terrorist group. This presents a comparative analysis of three types of terrorists in southwest Asia: Palestinians, Marxist-Leninists, and Muslims. The first section summarizes and compares the three groups' motivational causes, philosop… more
Date: August 1990
Creator: Zonozy, Nassrullah Y. (Nassrullah Yeganeh)
open access

Concerning Millennials: Exploring Generational Cohort Effects on Racial Linked Fate, Religion and Politics, and Support for American Civil Liberities

Description: This research examines the political implications of the Millennial generation on American politics by exploring the interaction of generational cohort with race, social issues, and civil liberties. Relying on the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey and the 2018 General Social Survey, I examine (1) Millennial attitudes toward race and ethnicity by looking specifically at racial linked fate, (2) how Millennials interact with race and evangelical Christianity and how this interact… more
Date: August 2022
Creator: Molinar, J. Antonio
open access

Cost of Issuing Debt: An Analysis of the Factors Affecting the Net Interest Cost of State Bonds

Description: The major purpose of this dissertation is to explore the determinants of interest cost for state bonds. Various kinds of variables pertaining to issue characteristics, market characteristics, economic conditions, and political variables were statistically tested to assess their impact on the interest cost of state bonds. This research examines the variables found to be significant for local bonds, as well as some factors unique to state bonds, e.g., the types state agencies issuing debt and th… more
Date: December 1995
Creator: Chen, Li-Kanz
open access

The Counterinsurgency Dilemma: The Causes and Consequences of State Repression of Human Rights in Civil Wars

Description: In this project a theory of adaptive differential insurgency growth by the mechanism of repression driven contagion is put forth to explain variation in the membership and spatial expansion of insurgencies from 1981 to 1999. As an alternative to the dominant structural approaches in the civil war literature, Part 1 of the study proposes an interactive model of insurgency growth based on Most and Starr's opportunity and willingness framework. The findings suggest that state capacity, via its imp… more
Date: May 2010
Creator: Quinn, Jason Michael
open access

Crossing Over: Essays on Ethnic Parties, Electoral Politics, and Ethnic Social Conflict

Description: This dissertation analyzes several topics related to political life in ethnically divided societies. In chapter 2, I study the relationship between ethnic social conflict, such as protests, riots, and armed inter-ethnic violence, and bloc partisan identification. I find that protests have no effect on bloc support for political parties, riots increase bloc partisan identification, and that armed violence reduces this phenomenon. In chapter 3, I analyze the factors that influence the targeting o… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Stewart, Brandon
open access

Dealignment Decades on: Partisanship and Party Support in Great Britain, 1979-1996

Description: This dissertation surveys electoral change in Great Britain during the period between 1979 and 1996. It analyzes the long-term factors and the short-term dynamics underlying the evolution of three aspects of the electorate: party identification, voting intentions and party support in inter-election periods. Drawing on cross-sectional and panel data from the British Election Studies and public opinion polls, I investigate the impacts of long-term socialization and short-term perceptions on voter… more
Date: December 1996
Creator: Ho, Karl Ka-yiu

Democratic Pantheism in the Political Theory of Alexis de Tocqueville

Description: According to Alexis de Tocqueville, humanity is entering a new age of political and social equality, a new epoch in which the human race has no historical example or experience. As a result, he holds humanity's future will be largely determined by the political and moral choices made in this transitional time. For Tocqueville, the new egalitarian era is a forgone conclusion, but for him, the pressing question is whether humanity will choose a future in which it enchains itself to new forms of … more
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Date: May 2006
Creator: Bearry, Brian Anthony
open access

The Development and Implementation of Federal Policy Concerning Health Maintenance Organizations

Description: There is some controversy which centers around the question of whether a particular government policy or program may be Judged successful. This dissertation takes the position, with due respect to the difficulties of such a task, that policy success can be evaluated and that it is important that such evaluations be made. Traditionally, health care in the United States has been delivered by the solo medical practitioner on a fee-for-service basis. A relatively new concept in the health care deli… more
Date: August 1980
Creator: Enochs, David H.
open access

Does Cultural Heterogeneity Lead to Lower Levels of Regime Respect for Basic Human Rights?

Description: This dissertation is a cross-national investigation of the relationship between cultural heterogeneity and regimes' respect for basic human rights. The quantitative human rights literature has not yet addressed the question of whether high levels of cultural diversity are beneficial or harmful. My research addresses this gap. I address the debate between those who argue that diversity is negatively related to basic human rights protection and those who argue it is likely to improve respect for … more
Date: December 2002
Creator: Walker, Scott
open access

Does Euroscepticism Matter? the Effect of Public Opinion on Integration

Description: This dissertation seeks to test the proposition that public opinion is a driving force in integration, and thus examines the effect of euroscepticism on EU integration. Utilizing an understanding of integration as the process of European states achieving similar legal, social, cultural, political and economic policy outcomes while ceding greater policy power to European institutions, the relationship between aggregate level euroscepticism in EU member states (the United Kingdom, Germany, Irela… more
Date: December 2012
Creator: Williams, Christopher J.
open access

Does Gender Representation Matter? Gender, Descriptive and Substantive Representation, and Women-Friendly Districts

Description: This dissertation considers how district-level demographic factors favorable to women congressional candidates facilitate substantive representation of women's interests. I contribute to the existing research by linking the literature on women candidate emergence and electoral success with that on descriptive and substantive representation. Beyond simply asking whether and how women in Congress represent women's interests, I argue that the demographic characteristics of districts in which women… more
Date: December 2020
Creator: Friesenhahn, Amy
open access

Domestic Influences for Interstate Cooperation: Do Domestic Conditions Affect the Occurrence of Cooperative Events in Democratic Regimes?

Description: This research addressed two main issues that have become evident in studies of interstate cooperation. The first issue has to do with the relationship between cooperation and conflict. Can they be represented on a single, uni-dimensional continuum, or are they better represented by two theoretically and empirically separable dimensions? Granger causality tests were able to clarify the nature of cooperative events. The second issue is related to factors that might facilitate or discourage cooper… more
Date: August 2004
Creator: Yi, Seong-Woo
open access

Drug-Related Violence and Party Behavior: The Case of Candidate Selection in Mexico

Description: This dissertation examines how parties respond and adapt their behavior to political violence. Building a theoretical argument about strategic party behavior and party capture, I address the following questions: How do parties select and recruit their candidates in regions with high levels of violence and the pervasive presence of VNAs? Do parties respond to violence by selecting certain types of candidates who are more capable of fighting these organizations? Do parties react differently at di… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Pulido Gomez, Amalia
open access

Ecological Sustainability and Peace: The Effect of Ecological Sustainability on Interstate and Intrastate Environmental Conflict

Description: This study examines the relationship between ecological sustainability and violent conflict at both the interstate and intrastate level. In particular, this study explores the effect of ecological sustainability of a society on the initiation and the occurrence of violent conflict. By developing a theory, which is named "Eco-peace," this study hypothesizes that the more ecologically sustainable the socioeconomic system of societies, the less likely the society is to initiate interstate conflict… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Yoon, Jong-Han
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