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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

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
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation

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
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

What Can the Collective Action Problem Tell Us about the Recurrence of Civil War and the Long-term Stability of a Country?

Description: This study attempts to explain why some countries experience multiple civil wars while others who have experienced a civil war build long-term stability from the rubble of conflict. The explanation of why civil war recurs focuses on the collective action problem, centering on the rebel leaders' ability to solve the Rebel's Dilemma. I further argue that once the Rebel's Dilemma has been solved once it is much easier for rebel leaders to solve it again and again. The empirical finds suggest … more
Date: December 2005
Creator: Kohler, Matthew
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

A transaction costs explanation of inter-local government collaboration.

Description: This study develops a model of collaboration choice among city governments. The theoretical model suggests that collaboration is a function of transaction costs that vary with different institutional arrangements utilized in cities, as well as the degree of competition between cities. This study argues that cities facing high transaction costs and high competition are less likely to participate in collaboration and to participate less deeply. Underlying these environmental factors are resour… more
Date: August 2005
Creator: Krueger, Eric L.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Institutions and Drug Markets

Description: This thesis examines how drug policy and enforcement affect drug manufacturers. The approach taken is a comparative institutional analysis of cannabis and methamphetamine production. I focus on the effects of prohibition, privacy, and clandestine markets on producer behavior for these two drugs and the unintended consequences that result. I demonstrate that cannabis and methamphetamine producers both face substantial transaction costs and that producers alter their behavior to manage these tran… more
Date: May 2005
Creator: Haddock, Billy Dean
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Religious Engagement and Social Capital in the Islamic Context

Description: Social capital research has traditionally been conducted in western and Christian settings as a precursor of changes such as democratization and development. This paper focuses on Islamic religious engagement and its potential to foster social capital. The model presented here is designed to suggest whether the Islam's influence occurs through doctrinal channels, or through Islam's capacity to organize social structures. The analysis conducted is a linear regression model with measures of socia… more
Date: May 2005
Creator: Brigaitis, Peter
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Weak states, human rights violations, and the outbreak of civil war.

Description: In recent years, explanations for the occurrence of civil war have mainly emphasized state weakness as providing an opportunity for greed-based rebellions. Yet, this explanation leaves many questions open, as it cannot distinguish between weak states that do and those that do not experience civil war. In this paper, I argue that abuses of personal integrity rights, committed or sponsored by the government, provide this missing link. The theory is illustrated and formalized in a game-theoretic m… more
Date: May 2005
Creator: Rost, Nicolas
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation

The Destruction of a Society: A Qualitative Examination of the Use of Rape as a Military Tool

Description: This thesis explores the conditions under which mass rapes are more likely to be incorporated into the strategy of military or paramilitary groups during periods of conflict. I examine three societies, Rwanda , the former Yugoslavia , and Cambodia in a comparative analysis. To determine what characteristics make societies more likely to engage in rape as a military tool, I look at the status of women in the society, the religious cultures, the degree of female integration into the milit… more
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Date: December 2004
Creator: Finley, Briana Noelle
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

War and peace: Towards an understanding of the theology of jihad.

Description: The growing number of terrorist attacks waged by Islamic fundamentalists has led to an increasing desire to understand the nature of jihad. These attacks have led to a renewed sense of urgency to find answers to such questions as why these attacks occur, and who they are waged against. Towards this end I turn to examine the political philosophy of four Muslim theologians. Specifically I look at the political philosophy of Sayyid Qutb, Shah Walai Allah Dihlawai, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and Muha… more
Date: December 2004
Creator: Shaikh, Erum M.
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

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
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Teachers union influence on alternative teacher certification policies: An event history diffusion analysis.

Description: I examine the passage of alternative teacher certification policies in the states between 1975 and 2000 using event history analysis and supplementing the event history analysis with an ordinary least squares regression analysis of the strength of the alternative teacher certification policies. In order to test both teachers unions political strength external to state legislatures and teachers unions political strength internal to state legislatures, I use two variables to measure teachers unio… more
Date: August 2004
Creator: Sheard, Wenda
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

The Impact of Gender on Domestic Human Rights Abuse

Description: This study develops three models of human rights determinants with the inclusion an untested variable, women in parliaments. The research is conducted on pooled cross-sectional time-series data from 130 countries between 1978 and 1996. For the purpose of analysis the Prais-Winsten Regression method with Panel Corrected Standard Errors was used. The women in power variable is hypothesized to be significantly, positively correlated with a state's propensity toward respect for human rights and is … more
Date: May 2004
Creator: Godwin, Donna D.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Judicial Enforcers? Exploring Lower Federal Court Compliance in Regulating the Obscene

Description: Although federal circuit and district court judges are placed within a federal hierarchy, and receive legal and judicial training that emphasizes the importance of the judicial framework and its structure, such judges are also subjected to other pressures such as the types of litigants within the courtrooms as well as their local political environment. Furthermore, such judges are apt to form their own views about politics and legal policy and are often appointed by presidents who approve of th… more
Date: May 2004
Creator: Ryan, John Francis
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Impact of Middle Class Economic Strength on Civil Liberties Performance and Domestic and External Peace

Description: Using data for 93 countries from 1972 through 2001 in cross-national analysis, this study compares the relative economic strength of a country's middle-class with its civil liberties performance and its history of domestic and external conflict. For purposes of this analysis, the relative strength of a country's middle-class is determined by multiplying the square root of a country's gross domestic product per capita by the percentage of income distributed to the middle 60 % of the population (… more
Date: December 2003
Creator: Stedman, Joseph B.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The value of human rights on the open market: Liberal economic policies and the achievement of personal integrity rights.

Description: At the end of World War II, the United States emerged as a world leader, putting into place international institutions based on its own liberal economic philosophy. Since then, the world has witnessed an increasing interconnectedness among states, with economic relationships continually blurring the distinction between domestic and international, as well as between state and societal forces. Much of the world associates this increased interconnectedness with human suffering around the globe. Th… more
Date: December 2003
Creator: Harrelson-Stephens, Julie
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Czech Republic's Transition: The Environment and Human Rights

Description: This exploratory case study considers the Czech Republic from 1993 thru 2002 by examining two links: first, between transition and the environment.; second, between the environment and human rights. The study examines data from the Czech Ministry of Environment, the European Union, the World Bank, and Freedom House. The purpose of this study is to better understand the Czech Republic and to generate hypotheses that might be used in future cross-national studies. Chapter III provides the underly… more
Date: May 2003
Creator: Buck, Ryan D.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Domestic Politics of Entering International Communities: An Exploratory Analysis

Description: In the last thirty years, there has been a significant increase in the globalization process, or as other refer to it, the internationalization, free trade, or liberalization. This trend was reflected in the increasing number of newly formed international organization (economic and security) as well as in the increased membership in the already existing ones. The evidence of this trend has been particularly visible since the end of the Cold War, when the race of the Eastern European countries t… more
Date: May 2003
Creator: Radin, Dagmar
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Extreme Politics: An Analysis of the State Level Conditions Favoring Far Right Parties in the European Union

Description: Three models are developed to analyze the state level conditions fostering the rise of far right parties in the European Union in the last two decades. The political background of these parties is examined. This study offers a definition for far right parties, which combines several previous attempts. The research has focused on the effects of the number of the parties, immigration, and unemployment on support for the far right in Europe. Empirical tests, using a random effects model of fifty e… more
Date: May 2003
Creator: Smith, Jason Matthew
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Financial Transfer and Its Impact on the Level of Democracy: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Time Series Model.

Description: This dissertation is a pooled time series, cross-sectional, quantitative study of the impact of international financial transfer on the level of democracy. The study covers 174 developed and developing countries from 1976 through 1994. Through evaluating the democracy and democratization literature and other studies, the dissertation develops a theory and testable hypotheses about the impact of the international variables foreign aid and foreign direct investment on levels of democracy. This st… more
Date: May 2003
Creator: Al-Momani, Mohammad H.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Political Economy of Organizational Expansion. Finding the Link Between Insider and Outsider in the European Union

Description: Scholars often address the process of enlargement as one-sided argument. This work provides a general theory of organizational expansion by including strategies and actions of both, applicant states and members of international organizations. It is argued that dependent on the domestic characteristics of states an organization strategically implement a set of conditions to avoid the application and admission of states, which are either not able to conform with the rules or not willing to pay th… more
Date: May 2003
Creator: Schneider, Christina J.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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