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Revisiting Eric Nordlinger: The Dynamics of Russian Civil- Military Relations in the Twentieth Century

Description: This paper examines the role that military has played in the political development of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the modern Russian Federation. By utilizing the theoretical tenets of Eric Nordlinger, this paper endeavors to update and hopefully revise his classic work in civil-military relations, Soldiers in Politics. Chapter one of this paper introduces many of the main theoretical concepts utilized in this analysis. Chapter two considers the Stalinist totalitarian pene… more
Date: August 2001
Creator: Ardovino, Michael
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Suicide Terrorism: A Future Trend?

Description: This thesis reviews the literature on “new terrorism,” to be differentiated from the “old terrorism.” The study tests two hypotheses. First, has an increase in religiously inspired terrorist groups led to an increase in terrorism's lethality? Second, does suicide bombing as a tactic explain the increased lethality of “new terrorism”? The study demonstrates three findings. First, it was found that religiously inspired terrorist groups are more lethal, though not more indiscriminate. Second, th… more
Date: August 2002
Creator: Capell, Matthew B.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Changing Ideological Boots: Adaptive Legislator Behavior in Changing Districts

Description: Congressional roll-call votes are often used to investigate legislative voting behavior. To depict adaptive roll-call behavior in response to demographic changes that occur during redistricting, I use issue specific interest group scores from the ADA, NFU, and COPE. This exploits the bias in the selection of the issues that interest groups utilize to rate U.S. representatives, by using them to reflect changes in response to significant demographic fluctuations in the constituency population. T… more
Date: August 2002
Creator: Dunaway, Johanna
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Rubber Stamps and Litmus Tests: The President, the Senate, and Judicial Voting Behavior in Abortion Cases in the U.S. Federal District Courts

Description: This thesis focuses on how well indicators of judicial ideology and institutional constraints predict whether a judge will vote to increase abortion access. I develop a model that evaluates a judge's decision in an abortion case in light of ideological factors measured at the time of a judge's nomination to the bench and legal and institutional constraints at the time a judge decides a case. I analyze abortion cases from all of the U.S. Federal District Courts from 1973-2004. Unlike previous st… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Craig, McKinzie
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Solicitor Success: The Continuing Exploration of the Determinants of Governmental Success at the Supreme Court, 1986-2005

Description: Studies of the Supreme Court consistently show that the Office of the Solicitor General enjoys remarkable success before the Supreme Court, both at the certiorari stage and at the merits stage. These studies offer a variety of explanations for Solicitor General success, but fail to portray accurately the Office of the Solicitor General and to account for variations in governmental success. This paper seeks to continue the exploration of governmental success. By looking at the Office of the Soli… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Grubbs, Kevin
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Commander's Sword & the Executive's Pen: Presidential Success in Congress and the Use of Force.

Description: Post-force congressional rally effects are presented as a new incentive behind presidential decisions to use diversionary behavior. Using all key roll call votes in the House and Senate where the president has taken a position for the years 1948 to 1993, presidents are found to receive sharp decreases in both presidential support and success in Congress shortly after employing aggressive policies abroad. Evidence does suggest that presidents are able to capitalize on higher levels of congressio… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Ragland, James Deen
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Blessed and the Damned: Peacemakers, Warlords, and Post Civil War Democracy

Description: This thesis seeks to explain how democracies emerge out of the ashes of civil wars. This paper envisions transitions to democracy after a civil war largely as a function of the peace process. Democracy is thought of as a medium through which solutions to the problems and issues over which the civil war was fought can be solved without violence. Transitions to democracy are more likely if there is a large bargaining space and the problems of credible commitments to democratization can be solved.… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Wright, Thorin M.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Towards European Integration: Do the European Union and Its Members Abide by the Same Principles?

Description: In the last few decades the European Union (EU) and its members have emphasized the importance of human rights and the need to improve human rights conditions in Third World countries. In this research project, I attempted to find out whether the European Union and its members practice what they preach by giving precedence to countries that respect human rights through their Official Development Assistance (ODA) program. Furthermore, I tried to analyze whether European integration occurs at the… more
Date: August 2004
Creator: Etienne, Anne
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Does Natural Resource Wealth Spoil and Corrupt Governments? A New Test of the Resource Curse Thesis

Description: Countries with rich natural resource endowments suffer from lower economic growth and various other ills. This work tests whether the resource curse also extends to the quality of regulation and the level of corruption. A theoretical framework is developed that informs the specification of interactive random effects models. A cross-national panel data set is used to estimate these models. Due to multicollinearity, only an effect of metals and ores exports on corruption can be discerned. Margina… more
Date: August 2004
Creator: Petrovsky, Nicolai
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Do As They Say, and As They Do: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Norm Influence on Truth Commission Initiation, 1976-2003

Description: Truth commissions are bodies established in political transition, and they have the stated purpose of reckoning with human rights abuses committed by members of former regimes. The question driving this research is "Why have truth commissions increased so rapidly in the last 20 years?" This study moves beyond current research, which suggests that particular domestic political circumstances alone determine choice of transitional justice mechanisms. I argue that an international rule of behav… more
Date: August 2006
Creator: Dancy, Geoffrey Thomas
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation

The Undue Burden Standard: The Effects of Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) on State Abortion Laws

Description: This thesis examines the effects of the change from strict scrutiny to the undue burden standard in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). A history of abortion in the United States and the various ways in which government regulates it is explored. Particular attention is focused on the role of the federal judiciary in abortion regulation. Theories of judicial decision making are discussed as means to understand the outcome of cases. Several models are tested to determine which, if any, model exp… more
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Date: August 2006
Creator: Burlage, G. Rachel
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Contemporary Patterns of Democratic Norms and Political Participation in Mexico

Description: Mexico's cultural norms have been the subject of repeated inquiries because democratic and authoritarian patterns appear concomitantly. However, few have focused on the potential demographic and contextual sources of these divergent results. This study attempts to clarify the sources of Mexico's political culture, and then determine the extent to which these factors affect political participation. Statistical analysis of a LAPOP dataset from 2006 makes limited progress to this end. The sour… more
Date: August 2008
Creator: Ramsey, Adam Perry
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Child Soldiers and Intrastate Armed Conflicts: An Analysis of the Recruitments of Child Soldiers in Civil Wars Between 2001 and 2003.

Description: This thesis examines why some governments and rebel organizations but not others recruit children to be child soldiers. The theory posits that if a country fights in a civil war of long duration, armed groups are more likely to recruit children as soldiers. I find that the probability of child soldier recruitment increases when a country experiences following conditions: a longer duration of civil war, a large proportion of battle deaths, a large number of refugees, a high infant mortality rate… more
Date: August 2008
Creator: Samphansakul, Attaphorn
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Reassessing the Role of Anxiety in Information Seeking

Description: Previous research of the theory of Affective Intelligence holds that anxiety in individuals causes learning behavior. If people are anxious they will actively seek new information. This new information gathered while anxious will cause each individual person to cease acting habitually and begin acting in a manner in line with rational choice models. This thesis addresses three hypotheses; (1) that people who feel anxiety engage in greater information seeking behavior and (2) when people feel… more
Date: August 2008
Creator: Williams, Christopher J.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Saying Sorry: Conflict Atrocity and Political Apology

Description: This study proposes and tests a comprehensive theory detailing the motivations behind political apologies. A brief survey of the literature shows a field rich in case studies but lacking in rigorous scientific analysis. The theory presented proposes a three-level examination of political apology at the state, dyadic, and system levels and incorporates the effects of culture, conflict, and the nature of the international system into analysis. This study makes use of a new dataset recording th… more
Date: August 2009
Creator: Chalkley, Marie Leone
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

An Informational Theory of Midterm Elections: The Impact of Iraq War Deaths on the 2006 Election.

Description: There has been much scholarly attention directed at the Iraq war's role in determining voter choice. I attempt to extend that research into voter turnout to determine what role the Iraq war played in 2006 voter turnout. This paper argues that turnout at the state level could be explained by the number of US deaths each state had sustained from the Iraq occupation at the time of the election. A theory of voter activation based on information availability is put forth to explain the relationsh… more
Date: August 2009
Creator: Kahanek, Jared E.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Dichotomy of Congressional Approval

Description: This thesis seeks to understand how political awareness affects what information one uses to indicate their approval or disapproval of Congress and its members. More concisely, do more and less aware individuals rely on the same pieces of political information to mold their opinions of Congress? The second question of concern is what role does media consumption play in informing survey respondents about Congress. Third, I consider how survey respondents use cues like the condition of the econom… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Moti, Danish Saleem
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Beggars, Brides, and Bards: The Political Philosophy of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew

Description: To do justice to Shakespeare’s comprehensive moral and political thought this paper seeks to discover what we can learn from the political philosophy of his largely neglected comedy, Taming of the Shrew. Not only does this endeavor provide a valuable forgotten link within the critical analyses of the theorists, but it also corrects the various misinterpretations of the play among contemporary critics. I argue that the play surveys various key themes that are rooted in classical political philos… more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Murphy, Stephanie Miranda
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The South in Presidential Politics: The End of Democratic Hegemony

Description: The purpose of this paper is to document and quantify the primary reasons for the gradual erosion of southern Democratic hegemony in presidential elections during the last twenty-four years. The results confirm and reinforce the findings of the historical study, which indicates the primary reason for changing southern allegiance has been the changing philosophy of the Democratic Party in the civil rights field.
Date: August 1973
Creator: Buchholz, Michael O.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The United States Senate: Stumbling Block to Supreme Court Nominations

Description: The problem undertaken is a study of the Senate's right to refuse confirmation of presidential nominations to the Supreme Court of the United States and its interpretation of this constitutional prerogative today. A case study of the nomination and rejection of Abe Fortas is used to illustrate the contemporary role of the Senate and to serve as a basis for predictions for future nominations.
Date: August 1971
Creator: Selman, Dorothy L.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Mexico in the United Nations

Description: The purpose of this investigation is to look at the international organization from the point of view of a small, non-military nation to discover if and how it may be useful to such a nation in carrying out its foreign policy objectives in a bi-polar, nuclear world.
Date: August 1971
Creator: Barron, Stephanie L.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Impact of the Civics Curriculum on the Political Attitudes and Behavior of R. L. Turner High School Students

Description: The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of the civics curriculum on the political attitudes and behavior of R. L. Turner High School students. The impact of the civics curriculum is determined by analyzing the ability of the curriculum to achieve some of the most commonly avowed objectives of civic education. If the objectives of the civics curriculum are being attained, the political attitudes and behavior of students who have completed the course should be different from those of s… more
Date: August 1971
Creator: Couch, Stephen L.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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