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open access

Linkages between the Texas Supreme Court and Public Opinion

Description: This investigation sought to identify linkages between the Texas Supreme Court and public opinion through 1) a matching of written decisions with scientifically conducted public opinion polls; 2) direct mention of public opinion and its synonyms in Texas justices' decisions; 3) comparison of these mentions over time; and 4) comparison of 10 personal attributes of justices with matched decisions. The study moved the unit of analysis from the U.S. Supreme Court to the state court level by using c… more
Date: May 1995
Creator: Ragland, Ruth Ann Vaughan
open access

Socioeconomic Development and Military Policy Consequences of Third World Military and Civilian Regimes, 1965-1985

Description: This study attempts to address the performance of military and civilian regimes in promoting socioeconomic development and providing military policy resources in the Third World. Using pooled cross-sectional time series analysis, three models of socioeconomic and military policy performance are estimated for 66 countries in the Third World for the period 1965-1985. These models include the progressive, corporate self-interest, and conditional. The results indicate that socioeconomic and militar… more
Date: May 1992
Creator: Madani, Hamed
open access

Presidential Support and the Political Use of Presidential Capital

Description: This research incorporates a decision-making theory which defines the linkage between the public, the media, the president and the Congress. Specifically, I argue that the public holds widely shared domestic and international goals and responds to a number of external cues provided by the president and the media in its evaluation of presidential policies. Although most studies examine overall presidential popularity, there are important differences in the public's evaluations of the president's… more
Date: December 1998
Creator: Ault, Michael E.
open access

Immigration Beliefs and Attitudes: A Test of the Group Conflict Model in the United States and Canada

Description: This study develops and tests a group conflict model as an explanation for international immigration beliefs in the United States and Canada. Group conflict is structured by evaluations concerning group relationships and group members. At a conceptual level group conflict explains a broad range of policy beliefs among a large number of actors in multiple settings. Group conflict embodies attitudes relating to objective-based conditions and subjective-based beliefs.
Date: August 1999
Creator: McIntyre, Chris, 1964-
open access

Democratization and the Information Revolution: A Global Analysis for the 1980s

Description: Comparative studies of democratization point to a multitude of explanatory factors, while often lacking empirical evidence and theoretical foundation. This study introduces the revolution in information technology as a significant contributor to democratization in the 1980s and beyond. Utilizing a cybernetic version of an evolutionary interpretation of democratization an amended model for 147 countries is tested by bivariate and multiple regression analysis. The focus of the analysis is on how … more
Date: August 1995
Creator: Esslinger, Thomas A. (Thomas Andreas)
open access

U.S. Foreign Assistance and Democracy in Central America: Quantitative Evaluation of U.S. Policy, 1946 Through 1994

Description: U.S. policymakers consistently argue that U.S. security depends on hemispheric democracy. As an instrument of U.S. policy, did foreign assistance promote democracy in Central America, 1946 through 1994? Finding that U.S. foreign assistance directly promoted neither GDP nor democracy in Central America, 1946 through 1994, I conclude that U.S. policy failed consistently in this specific regard.
Date: August 1996
Creator: Lohse, Stephen Alan
open access

Municipal Bond Ratings and the Willingness to Issue Debt: A Pooled Cross-sectional Analysis of Texas Cities

Description: This dissertation deals with one aspect of how city officials respond to community needs. It is about the decisions of governments on how to secure the financial resources needed to fulfill their obligations to the public. The study explores the factors that influence officials' decisions to issue debt. It is different from other municipal bond studies in that it focuses on the behavior of bond issuers rather than bond investors and the rating agencies.
Date: December 1995
Creator: Laosirirat, Phanit
open access

The Rise and Fall of Military Regimes in the Sudan, 1956-1989

Description: This study attempts to explore the factors that contributed to the rise and fall of military regimes in the Sudan from independence in 1956 to 1989. Further, the study tries to identify the factors that led to the collapse of either or both civilian and military regimes. Most of the studies on military politics have focused their research on either military coups or, more recently, on military withdrawal from politics. This work tries to synthesize the study of military coups and military withd… more
Date: December 1992
Creator: Ali Ahmed, Hassan Elhag
open access

The Political Leadership Crisis and Violation of Human Rights in the Arab World: A Study of the Rulership of the Arab Countries, 1970-1990

Description: This dissertation analyzes the political leadership crisis and the violations of human rights in the Arab countries during the period 1970 to 1990. The main purposes of this study could be briefly summarized as follows: (1) to explore scientifically whether there is a political leadership crisis in the Arab World; (2) to explore the concept of political leadership, i.e., what constitutes political leadership, what are its necessary requirements, and what differentiates it from dictatorship; and… more
Date: December 1993
Creator: Benruwin, Mohammed (Mohammed A.)
open access

Modeling State Repression in Argentina and Chile: A Time Series Analysis

Description: This study is an attempt to contribute to the emerging theoretical literature on state repression. A time-series model was developed to test the hypothesis that state violence in Argentina and Chile is largely a function of four internal political factors and their interactions: 1) the inertial influence of past restrictive policies on the formulation of current policies, 2) the annual incidence of political protest demonstrations, 3) the perceived effectiveness of repressive measures on unrest… more
Date: December 1993
Creator: King, John Christopher
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

Political Culture in West and East Germany at the TIme of Reunification: Revisiting the Civic Culture

Description: Studies of political culture have often focused on the impact of political institutions on political culture in a society. The scientific community has accepted the position that institutions shape beliefs and attitudes among the citizens towards the system they live in. This study tests this hypothesis by using survey data collected during the fall of 1990 in the United States, Great Britain, Italy, West, and East Germany.
Date: August 1997
Creator: Baumann, Steffen
open access

The Politicization of Public Education in Nicaragua: 1967-1994, Regime Type and Regime Strategy

Description: Understanding how change occurs in lesser developed countries, particularly in Latin America has been the subject of a prolonged theoretical academic debate. That debate has emphasized economics more that politics in general and predictability over unpredictability in the Latin American region. This paper challenges these approaches. Explaining change requires an examination of the politics of public policy as much as its economic dimensions. Second, change in the Latin American region may be l… more
Date: May 1996
Creator: Coplin, Janet C. (Janet Cecile)
open access

Rivers, Mountains, and Everything in Between: How Terrain Affects Interstate Territorial Disputes

Description: Geography has been a central element in shaping conflict through the ages, and is especially important in determining which states fight, why they fight, when they fight, and more importantly, where they fight. Despite this, conflict literature has primarily focused on human geography while largely ignoring the geospatial context of ‘where' conflict occurs, or crucially, doesn't occur. Territorial disputes are highly salient issues that quite often result in militarized disputes. Terrain has… more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Burggren, Tyler Matthew Goodman
open access

Human Rights & U.S. Foreign Aid, 1984-1995: The Cold War and Beyond...

Description: This study attempts to cast empirical light on the traditionalist-revisionist debate regarding the impact of the Soviet Union's collapse on U.S. foreign policy decision-making. To accomplish this goal, the relationship between human rights and U.S. foreign aid decision-making is examined before and after the Cold War. In doing so, the author attempts to determine if "soft" approaches, such as the use of a country's human rights records when allocating aid, have garnered increasing attention sin… more
Date: December 1999
Creator: Miller, Brian Lawrence
open access

The impact of US-China relations on Taiwan's military spending (1966-1992).

Description: Previous research has shown that Taiwan's military spending is affected either by China's military buildup or the US's military pipeline. This study investigates whether it is also true an ongoing US-China relationship has dynamic effects. Three major findings are obtained from the statistical analyses. First and foremost, the level of US-China conflict has a contemporaneous positive effect on Taiwan's military spending. Second, the analyses also indicate that the volatility of US-China relatio… more
Date: May 2002
Creator: Yu, Tsung-Chi Max
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

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
open access

Human Rights and the Strategic Use of US Foreign Food Aid

Description: How does respect for human rights affect the disbursement of food aid by US foreign policymakers? Scholars analyzing foreign aid generally look at only total economic aid, military aid or a combination of both. However, for a more nuanced understanding of human rights as a determinant of foreign aid, the discrete foreign aid programs must be examined. By disentangling component-programs from total aid, this analysis demonstrates how human rights influence policymakers by allowing them to distri… more
Date: December 2007
Creator: Fariss, Christopher J.
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
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.
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
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.
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