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The conference paper on use of signing statements by the U.S. Presidents which are official statements issued at the time of a law's enactment is discussed. It refers to the usage of constitutional signing statements as an effective unilateral tool which can be use to combat a hostile Congress functioning in the nation. An overview of the controversies behind amount of scholarship devoted to the rationale behind signing statements is also included.

A conference paper about bad U.S. Presidents with reference to the core responsibilities of American chief executives is presented. It mentions that the presidential rating has started in 1948 by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger who asked respondents to assign presidents to categories from great to failure. It also discusses the attributes that determines Presidents' ranking.

A conference paper about political satire and candidate evaluations in the 2008 U.S. election is presented. It examines general models of candidate evaluation formation and discusses the role of added element of political satire into these existing models. It mentions that this model would explain the failure of American voters to remember specific details about candidates and their campaigns.

A conference paper discussing the ideological connection between members of the U.S. Congress and their constituents is presented. It examines the effect of partisan political polarization on several benefits that result from or coincide with seniority but are independent of ideology. It also discusses data from the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1990s and 2000s and found that partisan political polarization may not factor into members' electoral calculations.

After many semesters of teaching an upper division political science elective in environmental policy and frustration with the end product of a semester long policy project, it occurred to me that a significant part of the problem was the type of sources and the kinds of information that students were utilizing. After a series of discussions with the reference librarian for political science, I came to hypothesize that poor student information literacy might be the problem. Accordingly, a reference librarian and I decided to test this hypothesis and see if the underlying issue was subpar information literacy. Instead of the traditional model of a faculty member sending his/her students to the library to get information (c.f. Marfleet and Dille 2005), we decided to work together before the semester began to redo the entire policy project and to continue those collaborative efforts throughout the semester. While there are still changes we would make, we have been pleased with the outcomes of our collaboration over the course of two different semesters in which the project was implemented in the environmental policy course. After analyzing citations in two different sets of papers, we note a remarkable increase in the number of sources students used in their project and in the quality of the sources employed. Ultimately, we have found that when a faculty member works with a librarian throughout the semester, it is better and our collaboration has improved the information literacy of our students, and therefore, the finished product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a text analysis on the presidential speeches in the U.S. to examine the factors that contributed to the rhetorical president and the claim by political scientist Richard Neustadt that the power of a president depends on his power to persuade. Also cited are the studies by political scientists Jeffrey Tulis and David Nichols on rhetorical presidency, the guiding principle of presidential communication, and the speeches of such U.S. presidents as George Washington.

A conference paper about the correlation of the food protests with economic, and political development is presented. It discusses the mechanism of understanding the reaction of people and the government to food price shock. It examines the potential of the food protests which have followed food price increases in 2011, with much less frequency than before.

This paper will examine how extreme partisanship in the United States Senate has prevented any significant collaborative efforts between the President Obama and Congress. I argue that the United States Senate is undergoing a modern era of disunion. The conditions in the Senate can be directly traced to the concerted efforts of Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to maintain ideological purity among his caucus members for the purposes ensuring that President Obama's has a failed presidency by asserting a Republican agenda that is aimed at undermining the legitimacy of Democratic initiatives. The Constitutional responsibility for shared governance has been severely compromised by conservative factions of the Republican Party. Subsequently, members of Congress who wish to find compromises across party lines are shut out of the political process. I propose that the restoration and continued health of the American democracy is dependent on the members' ability to reassert their influence collectively into the political process through engaging their colleagues and constituencies in the process of deliberative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Winthrop University used its location in the Charlotte metropolitan area to develop a course that combined academic content with an experiential component during the Democratic National Convention. This paper seeks to use a variety of measures of student performance to determine the relative value of experiential learning. Consistent with previous findings, the experiential component did not lead to new academic knowledge, or necessarily improve students' academic performance. However, the academic portion of the course did seem to provide students with the necessary context to understand the value of the experiential component. In addition, consistent with the literature, the experiential component did seem to be a meaningful and memorable experience that may encourage students to continue to be actively engaged citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses contributions of students regarding how to work large undergraduate research projects with ideas about participation, presentation, and delivery of the paper, as well as future directions for undergraduate research based upon lessons learned in 2009. It also discusses individual projects prepared by students at conferences like the 2010 Southern Political Science Association conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

The article discusses the impact of the recession in the late 2000s on the trends of migrant employment. Topics discussed include changes in employer demand, supply of labor, and consumption of goods due to the global recession, fundamental human rights of foreign migrant workers based on the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (UCW) and push and pull factors in international migration.

The article discusses the failure of the U.S. government in achieving good foreign intelligence that has led to the events of September 11, 2001. It informs that from the starting of the U.S. Republic, the need for good intelligence in wartime has been critical. The U.S. President George Bush mentioned that foreign intelligence forms the basic part of the constitutional authority.

Even before she came onto the national political screen, Sarah Palin, a former Governor of the State of Alaska and the former 2008 Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, was mentioned in The Washington Post Newspaper as a noteworthy politician. This commentary will attempt to discern why that was and still is the case, considering the fact she often ends actions soon after she starts them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the credibility imperative as an independent variable in explaining the foreign policy and international relations behavior of the U.S. Concepts of reputation and credibility as they relate to state behavior; Discussion of the dynamics of U.S. foreign policy; Effects of the credibility imperative on U.S. foreign policymakers since the end of the cold war.

Since the end of the Second World War, two political parties have dominated political activity in the Kurdish territory in Northern Iraq: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Recently, a new movement has begun to emerge that presents the first legitimate opposition to these ruling parties. The Change List, a splinter group formed by former PUK members, is mobilizing Kurdish voters on the platform of change. In the KRG's 2009 parliamentary elections, the Kurdistan Region's ruling parties took nearly 60% of the votes, leaving the Change List with a mere 25% of the open parliamentary seats. While still a loss for the new movement, this development illustrated an unprecedented shift away from the nearly seventy years of the patronistic rule that defined Kurdish politics. This paper hypothesizes that voter concerns regarding nepotism, patronism and lack of transparency with the ruling parties drove this ground-breaking development and that socioeconomic changes over the past two decades have allowed for this shift in voter preferences. The emergence of the Gorran-Change List indicates a challenge to the status-quo relationship between the parties and the voters. This study will use a historical-sociological single-case study of security and economic liberalization as possible causal mechanisms influencing the realignment of the party-voter relationship in the Kurdish Regional Government of Northern Iraq. Additionally, this paper will investigate the implications of this shift on the Kurdish nationalist and separatist movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the adoption of school interventions for youth obesity prevention in the U.S. is presented. It utilizes cross-sectional probit analysis and fifty state data through 2007 to analyze the adoption in different categorical school interventions. The findings reveal that the state government is more likely to adopt the school intervention of setting competitive food nutritional standards.

The article informs about the ban of lobbyists to contribute financially by U.S. President Barack Obama. It informs about tactics used from the period 2008-2009 during the presidential translation. It mentions that the analysis focuses on policies including area of transportation, criminal justice and disabilities. It also mentions that research has been done to analyze types of group including for-profit business, non-profit government and citizen groups.

This paper's goal is to offer guidance on how to teach case briefing and Issue-Rule-Application-Conclusion (IRAC) in online pre-law education. The teaching of case briefing and IRAC analysis poses particular challenges precisely because these are skills. Hence, they require practice rather than memorization. Teaching these skill in online education (a.k.a. distance learning) poses additional challenges but also new opportunities. Online education requires both students and instructors to adapt. Techniques traditionally used in face-to-face pre-law classes sometimes are transferable as-is to online courses, but often must be modified or replaced in online courses. Case brief and IRAC explanations and examples, grading rubrics, discussion forums, ungraded practice opportunities, peer feedback, instructor feedback, plagiarism-checking software, and other techniques are useful or even necessary learning resources and methods to successfully teach these skills. This paper discusses these techniques and the issues surrounding them. Most importantly, this paper offers suggestions for possible adaptations of these online learning methods to teach case briefing and IRAC analysis in online pre-law courses, based on the author's personal experience providing online pre-law education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the forcible recruitment of child soldiers by rebel organizations through a comparative case study analysis of the National Resistance Army and the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. Responses by the international community to the use of children as soldiers have continued to be ineffective and understanding the factors that motivate a group to forcibly recruit is crucial to curtailing the practice. This paper investigates the role that endowments of a rebel group have on their decision to forcibly recruit children as soldiers. I adapt Jeremy Weinstein's theory of the role of initial endowments on rebel group's use of force to explain why rebel organizations forcibly recruit children. I suggest that the type of endowments matter, specifically the type of endowments accessible to an organization. Endowments thus come in two forms--economic and social and each impacts how the group structures control and recruitment practices. The findings demonstrate that groups whose reliance rests on economic endowments will engage in forcible recruitment of children while groups who rely predominantly on social endowments will refrain from forcible recruitment of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary literature examining the adoption of morality-based public policy takes for granted the relationship between morality policy adoption and public opinion, viewing the adoption of morality-based policies as inherently normative in nature and based in an understanding of opinion-policy linkage. This paper seeks to reexamine the premises of older studies of morality-based policy adoption (Fairbanks 1977) by attempting to differentiate the effects of state-level cultural and social characteristics on policy adoption in relation to that of more traditional economic concerns. Which ultimately holds greater sway in relation to morality-based policies, the normative concerns of the people in relation to state political culture or the more elite-level concerns of economics and budget balancing? This paper looks at various excise taxes as well as lottery adoption and gambling legalization to examine the behavior of legislatures when political cultures clash with economic realities. While our results indicate that economic effects do moderate the actions of legislatures, they do so in ways different than expected. This paper also does not find significant results for the adoption of lotteries and gambling, indicating that fiscal conditions do not significantly influence legislators to act against their state's political culture in search of greater revenue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to examine the Constitution of the Confederate States of America critically to assess its merits and demerits. The purpose of this paper is not to evaluate the C.S.A. Constitution or its framers in regard to slavery. Clearly, by refusing to recognize the injustice of slavery and the Declaration's assertion that "all men are created equal," the C.S.A. Constitution cannot be admired. However, in its changes to the basic structure of the federal government, the C.S.A. Constitution might provide actual and perhaps even preferable alternatives to the form of government established by U.S. Constitution. Jefferson Davis asserted that the C.S.A. Constitution was a light which revealed the "true meaning" of the founding fathers.1 This paper will assess Davis's claim. It will do so primarily by comparing the preambles of each Constitution and the supporting documents which help to explain the essential purposes of government therein stated (e.g., the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist papers, Alexander Stephens's "Corner-Stone" speech). Such analysis will indicate that Davis is incorrect; the C.S.A. Constitution does not represent what the founding fathers intended in the original U.S. Constitution; the preambles establish different visions of the federal government. Even though the C.S.A. Constitution does not appear to embody the "true meaning" of the founding fathers, nevertheless the ways in which it diverges from the U.S. Constitution deserve attention. These changes will be evaluated to discern whether they either improve upon or adulterate the U.S. Constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every year almost 800 undergraduate students become involved in Moot Court, bringing attention to the question does a student's involvement in a rigorous action based class better their chance of succeeding in law school or graduate school? In the efforts to answer this question this paper compares small public college without moot court programs to similar colleges who do have moot court programs. Within those schools data was also be used to compare students both sets of studies to better analyze the data being presented. These findings would be compared to data gathered from colleges that had a statistically significant success rate from students no matter program they were involved in during undergraduate studies. Using a survey with a scale allowed data gathered from each school to be compared with the same accuracy. The surveys were distributed to professors and directors of the colleges being studied. The preliminary findings that this paper will mainly discuss is based from 20 surveys taken by students. From these preliminary findings this study was able to gather that programs such as moot court do indeed impact the success an individual has in law school or graduate school by preparing students with advanced reasoning, public speaking, writing capabilities, and made them think on their feet. These abilities allowed most students to be prepared for the challenges they face during their time in law school or their graduate program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular culture, particularly motion pictures, offer a view into a society's norms, beliefs and political culture. While that view might be skewed from time to time, it is still a useful way to discern "proper behavior" and accepted norms. This paper argues that artifacts from popular culture can be used as data, open to interpretation and analysis. To demonstrate this, the paper utilizes a case study approach to illustrate how film can be useful in identifying political traits and culture. By analyzing films about international events and situations as examples, the paper identifies how American films have portrayed other countries and cultures to better understand the evolution of American political culture. Using a case study approach to the topic, the paper demonstrates there has been a change in political culture with regards to the "other," and film and popular culture help to illustrate and evaluate that change. It concludes by arguing that the analyses of the messages and lessons contained in national cinemas can be transferred to the classroom to help students improve media literacy as well understand political issues from different perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What accounts for variation in individual's attitudes toward trade liberalization? Along the economic versus non-economic factor debate, recent studies have empirically shown that social trust matters greatly for individual trade opinions. The mechanism, however, is yet to be specified as to how social trust is associated with trade opinions. Employing cross-country survey data from World Values Survey (third wave) as well as U.S. data from General Social Survey (1996 module), this paper examines the nature of this link between social trust and trade attitudes. First, I find that there is a significant cross-country variation in whether the link can be observed, and that in some countries trust in government instead is correlated with trade support. I consider this variation in light of different welfare systems. Secondly, I examine whether social trust matters for trade opinion through psychological prejudice against out-groups, or through trust in in-groups, which may relate to concern for social security. Lastly, I consider how people differ in whether they tend to associate their trade opinions with non-economic feelings or with economic reasons. For instance, I find in this paper a significant difference along educational line. These findings indicate a future-promising path for investigating cross- country difference, as well as for a more overarching discussion on domestic versus international concern and economic versus non-economic factors, in advancing our understanding of the mechanism of trade opinion formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seeking to understand the multi-dimensional nature of anti-Americanism in the developing world, this study considers a five-component model, its theoretical dimensions, and operationalization. Gaining a more robust understanding of the five components: power imbalance, globalization, culture, contention, and media use, the paper examines the usefulness of current measures through the use of both individual-level and national-level data. Examining international opinion at two points in time (2002 and 2013) in eighteen developing countries, the full proposed model predicted 28.75% of the variance in the dependent variable, American Opinion Scale, a measure of favorable opinions of the United States and Americans while the 2002 only version of the model predicted 30.9% of the variance in American Opinion Scale. Through a discussion and analysis of Hofstede's Cultural Indicators, the paper also explores the changing dynamics of culture in the midst of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of this paper is to gain a meaningful understanding of how security relationships develop between former colonies and their former colonizers. Identifying the conditions that prompt a former colony to reject a security partnership with its former colonizer, and, in contrast, the factors that encourage a former colony to embrace a security relationship with its former colonizer will expand one's understanding of the nature of security relations within international politics. Northeast Asia's political climate presents a fascinating case study to examine the politics of alignment. Specifically, this paper aims to first peer through the lens of Korea and Taiwan's unique colonial experiences under Japanese rule to provide historical context to understand why the ROK and Japan struggle to develop a robust military relationship despite perceiving some external threats in the region similarly, and, in contrast, why Taiwan welcomes a security partnership with Japan today. However, this does not mean that Japan and the ROK do not work together to advance each other's interests totally, nor does this study suggest that Japan and Taiwan do not face conflicts of interest. To achieve a more comprehensive understanding of Japan's relationship with Korea and Taiwan, this paper also considers how Seoul and Taipei's unique colonial experiences and contemporary security relationships with Japan affect cooperation across diplomatic channels and economic partnerships. This study also acknowledges that assessing Japan's relationships with Korea and Taiwan prior to the colonial period would be insightful, though it will focus primarily from 1895 to the present. In particular, four critical factors help to explain Japan-ROK's toxic security relationship and Japan-Taiwan's strong, albeit, de facto security partnership: 1) national identity shaped by each country's unique colonial experience under Japanese rule, 2) the United States' managerial role across both of its security triangles in Northeast Asia, 3) shared perceptions of common threats, and 4) the politics of formal military alliances versus the politics of de facto security partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adds to the literature on ethnic political participation by analyzing variations in affiliation with the Republican Party among Vietnamese Americans in Orange County, California. Studying Vietnamese is important because of their "exceptionalism" among the predominantly Democratic leaning Asian American electorate, the latter due in part to their status as a racial minority. The "exceptionalism" is anchored in homeland politics around anti-communism, particularly among the first wave of Vietnamese political refugees. This paper provides insights to factors that structure party affiliation, and how assimilation processes modify party affiliation. We gather literatures from American partisanship, assimilation and political incorporation to argue that partisan affiliation is malleable and is dependent on the personal and context factors. We use voter registration data and the American Community Survey to test whether this alignment is durable among immigrants and across generations. The major findings from multivariate models are: Republicans tend to be more foreign born, older, male, are higher in income, and are those who registered in earlier years (which serve as a proxy for earlier immigrants who tend to be more anticommunist). These patterns are consistent with the literature. The difference between U.S. born and foreign born points to intergenerational shift where U.S. born Vietnamese are less likely to be Republicans across each registration period. Lastly, living away from the ethnic enclave (spatial assimilation) is associated with being less Republican. The findings support the assumption that homeland politics is replaced by domestic concerns. These results demonstrate the need to innovate traditional models of partisanship by incorporating assimilation factors to understand the political developments of new comers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most countries, elections are complex events, presenting voters with an extensive choice menu. In the modeling of electoral behavior, however, much of this complexity seems to get lost. This paper outlines a novel approach to understanding vote choice that relies on ideas from consumer research. The approach is slowly gaining ground but remains on the periphery of the discipline. The paper shows the potential benefits of choice sets, outstanding methodological issues, as well as potential domains of application. It finishes by sketching potential domains of application in electoral research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do authoritarian regimes care about the rule of law? By investigating China's political selection system, this paper finds that authoritarian regimes do care about the rule of law and promote it at the local level by providing local officials with promotion incentives when they enforce legal institutions effectively. This claim is demonstrated by examining rule of law measures in predicting local officials' promotion in China. Analysis of the State Council documents and 22 regulations covering over 70 percent of the countries' municipal leaders shows that formal evaluation rules for local leaders in some localities increasingly include metrics assessing the legal environment. Statistical analysis using a panel of administrative lawsuits in 279 prefectures in China during 2008-2012 supports the argument: the probability of prefecture party secretaries' promotion is highly correlated to rule of law concerns. Conversely, local officials who fail to maintain social stability, as indicated by their failure to appease social protests through legalized channels of dispute resolution, are less likely to be promoted. Using the 2011 Chinese General Social Survey data, this paper finds that citizens trust local governments more in prefectures with better legal environments, which explains why authoritarian rulers seek to promote the rule of law at the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving race relations is a tall order that is usually undertaken by analyzing a problem and coming up fix-it solutions. Another approach, not currently being attempted, is to examine paragons of ethnic harmony to learn lessons that can be applied elsewhere. Most remedies currently favored assume that solutions have to be sought within the dominant cultural framework, whereas the paper argues that cultures must be changed (reversed) on the basis of both cognitive and emotional appeals. The paper then identifies the intercultural approach to race relations practiced in Hawai'i as the paragon case--first identifying the cultural ethos of the Islands, and then examining how that culture might be engineered elsewhere, even by subliminal means, including by restoring independence to Hawai'i. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy analysis and the teaching of policy studies has mostly run along two tracks that rarely intersected. One track was the positivist, rational, value-neutral, quantitative track that has dominate the field. The second track was a postrationalist, postpositivist, and postmodern approach to analysis (Clemons and McBeth, 2009; Danziger, 1995; deLeon, 1997; and Stone, 2002). This paper largely is in the tradition of the second; the qualitative track that focuses on the social construction of reality and argues that subjectivity is inevitable. Based on the recent work of postpositivists to bridge the gap between positivism and postpositivism, specifically the article, "Narrative Policy Framework: Clear Enough to Be Wrong" (Jones & McBeth, 2010), this paper revisits the literature on policy typologies, media framing, and narrative analysis, specifically triggering events, to identify additional challenges that need to be overcome if narratives (as well as policy typologies and media frames) can ever be viewed as "clear enough to be wrong". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Robinson Country Intelligence Index (RCII; Brown, et.al., 2015) is a tool developed through a partnership between Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business and World Affairs Council of Atlanta (rcii.gsu.edu). It allows users to conduct holistic clinical diagnoses on countries, regions, clusters, and topics, initially through a developmental economics, classic political economy lens, with the tool also being highly adaptable to the "puzzle" or needs of the user. Since its inception more than six years ago, the RCII has been most robustly employed in university classrooms, though it has also been utilized by academic researchers and organizational practitioners. Classroom use has been interdisciplinary and wide ranging, extending from intermediate and upper-level Political Science courses, through a number of graduate level Business courses. In spring 2016, the RCII will be embedded for the first time into an introductory course (POLS 2401, "Global Issues") through the GSU Honors College Digital Literacy Initiative. This paper introduces pedagogical uses and outcomes to date, offering examples of diverse, interdisciplinary application. It then turns to challenges and unique possibilities with respect to broader assessment of both objective global, data, and digital literacy, as well as higher level critical and strategic thinking skills. The paper centers in on how students, from a range of academic levels and disciplinary pursuits, need to comprehensively and pragmatically identify the risks and challenges found in an ever "globalized" world, and then find ways to take on the corresponding responsibilities and opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do potentially transformative U.S. reforms often prove incoherent and incremental? In the U.S., the cultural and institutional barriers to enacting major reforms are high. After reforms are enacted, their opponents retain many institutional pathways to challenge reforms. This paper focuses on presidents in emergent partisan regimes as uniquely-positioned actors who broker design compromises throughout the reform process. During presidential campaigns, opposition candidates have incentives to promise transformative reforms which offer a decisive break from the past. Upon entering the legislative arena, however, presidents' incentives shift toward supporting moderating design compromises. Finally, as reforms are implemented, presidents face intense demands to make administrative decisions which appease the business community. Through the layering of design compromises, reforms are watered down and made less coherent. This paper explores this dynamic by analyzing the design and implementation of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. Existing scholarship explains the Federal Reserve System's design through reference to discrete critical junctures: a clandestine retreat at a Georgia resort; a broad congressional compromise; or a partisan-controlled implementation process. These explanations each describe the emergence of a more coherent "Fed" than the fragmented organization which began operations in 1914. To understand why potentially transformative reforms often disappoint, one must account for the shifting pressures presidents encounter when guiding reforms to fruition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between theology and political theory? Specifically, how can theology inform members of a religious tradition about the purposes of politics and government in democracies? To answer these questions, this paper focuses on one aspect of this topic, the relationship between eschatology and expected political purposes among theological schools of contemporary Evangelical Protestant Christians in the United States. This paper examines the eschatological expectations derived from Dispensationalism in comparison with older Amillennial, Postmillennial, and Historic Premillennial theologies common to Christian denominations, and explores how these theologies inform its adherents about political purposes of civil society. The author concludes that adherents of Dispensational theology face an inherent contradiction between an expected dystopian future and the success of political initiatives and government to solve public problems, whereas Amillennial, Postmillennial, and Historic Premillennial theologies offer the possibility of a more positive outlook for the role of government in solving problems in society. As a result, a conservative, anti-government political view emerges from Dispensational theology that limits political activism to constrain evil rather than a positive approach to solve public problems. This paper takes a theoretical approach to examine the relationship between theology and political purposes. Furthermore, this topic is significant, because the relationship between theological expectations and political ends should be examined to better understand how certain members of society view the expected performance of democratic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The linkage between the descriptive representation and substantive representation of underrepresented groups has been a long-standing concern for scholars, particularly those interested in the gendered nature of state legislative institutions. However, there is much scholarly ambivalence about how and when gender and partisanship interact in the substantive representation of women's health issues. How can infertility--a broadly appealing issue that is not aligned with political ideologies, unlike more commonly debated issues of abortion--inform and clarify the theoretical connection between descriptive and substantive representation by gender? Employing a novel research design that analyzes the role of time in gendered representation of women's health interests in state legislative institutions between 1985 and 2003, this paper argues that time plays a dynamic and multifaceted role in the relationship between partisan female legislators and the representation of women's health issues beyond abortion and contraception. The author acknowledges Lee Ann Banaszak, Kelly Dittmar, Mark Major, Michael Nelson, The Women and Politics Reading Group at Penn State University, and participants in the Center for American Political Responsiveness at Penn State University for their comments on previous drafts of this manuscript. Paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the Souther Political Science Association, San Juan, Perto Rico, January 6-10, 2016. Please do not cite without permission from author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation and effectiveness of global governance regimes are increasingly important issues for scholars and policy makers. The academic literature on the topic focuses on how and why states might establish such regimes, but devotes less attention to how and why they can change over time. This paper examines the establishment and the evolution of the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum established in 1996 to promote environmental protection and sustainable development in the region. In recent years, the Council has become more of a strategic and political forum as the consequences of global warming for the Arctic become apparent. The paper analyzes the nature of this adaptation, with attention to how the participating states have instituted several formal and informal processes to manage the changing policy agenda. The paper concludes by discussing implications of this case for the literature on global governance and for policy in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) stands as the signature policy achievement of the Obama Administration. It signifies the adoption of omnibus legislation and the creation of new market and regulatory structures in healthcare that rival those established by Medicaid and Medicare fifty years ago. Like the development and implementation of those policies, the ACA has not been without controversy. Indeed the level of enduring criticism and controversy surrounding the ACA is perhaps its most distinguishing characteristic in political terms. As a political artifact, it may well serve future historians and political scientists as the embodiment of the hyper-partisan and divisive politics of the early 21st century. Subject to legal and constitutional challenges, permeating election cycles, and used by some as proof of the problems of the administrative state and regulatory power, the ACA serves as both an expressive and explanatory vehicle for those both in politics and those who study politics. While taking into account the broad-sweep of ACA's policy changes, this paper concentrates on the role that "navigators," "assisters" and others involved in outreach, enrollment, and retention activities associated with individual health insurance marketplaces and, by extension, Medicaid outreach and enrollment. While the ACA both mandates and supports these intermediaries, the law was not entirely clear on their role or function nor could it anticipate the realities of implementation that are only revealed through experience. What has emerged have been differing approaches to consumer assistance. This paper focuses on two general approaches that while not necessarily contradictory, have different assumptions and functions in consumer assistance. These are the: 1) the social services approach, and 2) the marketing approach. Based on a review of ten state experiences, it is argued that the former approach prevailed in the initial roll-out of the individual health insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion. It is also suggested that the latter approach might be more effective as new market arrangements mature and a greater emphasis is placed on informed policy coverage choices and consumer retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have shown that while Latin America and the Caribbean is the world's most unequal region, income inequality has descended unambiguously for almost all of its countries and territories since the year 2000. Political and economic factors have been used to explain this change: a commodity boom along with new policies from the "new left" or "Pink Tide" governments occurred around the same period (McLeod and Lustig 2011). However, racial heterogeneity and inequalities could also hold important explanatory value in understanding the high inequality levels experienced in the subcontinent, as well as the differences between some countries' ability to reduce inequality faster than others. The causal relationships between race and inequality have been partially established by an interdisciplinary literature. This paper will examine the relation of racial heterogeneity with Gini income inequality levels from 1993 until 2014, while at the same time delving into historical institutional relations between race and socioeconomic status. The paper will give a framework that places racial relations at a central position in understanding inequality in Latin America, and eventually, elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adverse weather events such as earthquakes, tornados and floods affect thousands of people around the globe every year. The responses to such adverse events by national governments differ from country to country. While some states protect their populations relatively well, in others people suffer tremendously. The goal of this paper is to explore the political sources of this variation. Political factors have been acknowledged to play a core role in determining the degree of damage to people's lives and personal properties caused by natural disasters. Surprisingly, however, there is a lack of empirical research on the role of political institutions in disaster prevention and mitigation. This paper addresses this research gap and tests the effect of democracy and institutional quality on the degree of natural disaster damage using time series cross section data from the International Disaster Risk database, Varieties of Democracy Project and the Quality of Government dataset. Democracy with its freedom of speech, participation and representation and quality of government, which improves provision of public goods and policy implementation, are believed to minimize the number of people affected by natural disasters. We posit that democratic principles and high institutional quality are both crucial for building resilience and neither of the conditions is sufficient for disaster prevention and mitigation. The results support our expectations and show that higher institutional quality is associated with fewer people suffering the consequences of natural disasters only when egalitarian democracy is high. Additionally, if institutional quality is low, more democracy is associated with more human suffering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis expands on previous scholarly work by highlighting a source of representational bias. Where Erickson, Wright, and McIver (1989, 1993) show that public opinion and state policy tend to correlate significantly, they do leave open the question of possible sources of bias. More recent scholarly work (Bartels 2008, for example) highlights the representational disparity along economic lines. This paper attempts to analyze the other side of the same coin by focusing on the effect of duration of institutional control. I theorize that the longer one party holds onto control of state institutions, the larger the gap between the policy outcomes of the government and wishes of the people. Using a standard measure of citizen and state government ideology (Berry et al. 1998), this paper employs the absolute difference between state and citizen ideology as a measure of bias for the time span of 1984-2010. I also include specific policy dependent variables to capture the relationship on both macro and micro-levels of policy. By including a measure of length of party control as well as various controls, this paper shows that the longer one party controls state governments, the distance between government and citizen ideology tends to grow. Such an analysis should add to the literature by pointing to an additional source of representational bias stemming from the duration of institutional control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious identity plays a crucial role in the way groups and individuals behave and perceive morality. Religious identity separates "in-group" from "out-group" members, demonizing opposing groups and justifying violence based on religious value-systems. This paper provides a theoretical and comparative analysis of religious conflict in Nigeria and Tanzania, by examining religious polarization and fractionalization, relative to levels of democratic governance and public perception. Nigeria and Tanzania are effective case studies in examining religious conflict, since both are Sub-Saharan African states with largely split populations of Muslims and Christians. Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Data Project (2014), Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life (2010), and a dataset created by Montalvo and Reynal-Querol (2005) will be used for this assessment based on their relevancy to religious conflict, polarization, fractionalization, democracy, and public perception, combining quantitative and qualitative data for assessment. The author of this paper hypothesizes that religious polarization negatively affects levels of religious conflict, while religious fractionalization will have a positive effect. The findings of this paper support the hypothesis, indicating Nigeria's higher level of religious conflict is correlated with its large degree of religious polarization and decreased religious fractionalization. This correlation is also observed in Tanzania, which experiences lower levels of religious conflict, having a lesser degree of religious polarization and increased religious fractionalization. This paper concludes religious polarization, negatively impacts levels of democracy, resulting in higher rates of religious conflict, while religious fractionalization positively impacts democracy levels, resulting in decreased levels of religious conflict. Additional research is necessary to substantiate this conclusion further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the period of Southern politics when black-white Democratic coalitions dominated the political landscape. Our questions boil down to to testing three possible realignment outcomes associated with these black-white coalitions. Did they represent a separate and distinct party alignment, comparable to the New Deal and New Right alignments? Or alternatively, were they a symptom of the dealignment of New Deal party system? Or alternatively did they represent a failed party alignment? Using a vote-shares county level data for presidential and gubernatorial contests, this paper re-evaluates contested presidential and gubernatorial elections in all eleven former Confederate states between 1952 and 2012. We find that there was a failed black-white party realignment in Alabama and Mississippi, a successful black-white party realignment in Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and a long period of dealignment starting in 1964 or 1968 and ending during the Reagan presidency in Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, and Virginia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a systematic definition for wave elections, a concept which has been used frequently in discussions of congressional elections throughout history, but which has previously lacked a precise definition. Tracing the usage of the term "wave election" (and similar variations) since the mid-1800s, this paper details the frequency and manner in which this concept has been used in considerations of congressional elections over time. Subsequently, this paper offers a definition for wave elections that is based on the seat gain and seat-level for parties following an election. This definition can be used to classify House and Senate elections throughout American history, and can also be applied to state legislative elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era of increasing online political discussion, what place does face-to-face communication and discussion have in models of political behavior? In the past, scholars focused on how discussions with friends and family influenced voter's preferences and knowledge about candidates. While much of the literature has shifted towards the effects of online discussion on political knowledge and behavior, little has been done to update the discipline's understanding of personal interaction that still exists. Using survey data, this paper analyzes the changes in face-to-face political discussions in the shadow of increasing online discussion. This paper uses 2012 data to assess voter's preferences for political discussion and develops an updated model of how traditional political discussion among family and friends affects voting probability and political knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The State of the Union address is one of the few events at which members of all three branches of government are brought together at the same time. Unlike members of Congress, most of whom attend this speech every year, the decision by Supreme Court justices on whether to attend varies from justice to justice and from year to year. This paper looks at the factors that relate to attendance by Supreme Court justices at State of the Union addresses. In this paper, we look at a wider range of ideological and personal indicators at the individual justice level than is examined in existing research (see Peppers and Giles (2012)). Specifically, we argue and find that public confidence in the Supreme Court has an important effect on justices' decisions to attend the address. We also find that, contrary to attitudinal explanations of Court behavior, the ideological distance between a justice and the sitting president has no effect on a justice's decision to attend. We explore these results further by constructing a Court- level model to examine how year-specific factors (such as public opinion about the Court and internal division within the Court) relate to the number of justices who attend the State of the Union address in a given year. Again, public opinion proves an important predictor of justice attendance. Overall, this research has the potential to provide insight into the interactions between the three branches of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This interdisciplinary paper examines important similarities and differences in the way that Maoist China and Nazi Germany used political propaganda in their national feature-film industries. The first of part of this paper examines the film industry in the People's Republic of China during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. The Chinese communist regime used the power of film to perpetuate communist themes and to educate the masses about the heroic nature of the Chinese revolutionaries and Marxism. Mao believed through popular film the Chinese Communist Party could educate, entertain, and indoctrinate the Chinese population and could ferret out capitalist and bourgeois elements which he believed were infiltrating Chinese society. The second case study examines how Kolberg (1945), the very last feature film released in Nazi Germany, communicates key elements of Nazi ideology: the Leadership Principle, the celebration of Blood and Soil, and the call for total war, especially as expressed by Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels in his 1943 "Total War Address." Kolberg demonstrate both the power of Nazi political propaganda and its limitations as a political tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do Chinese students study abroad? Although the potential explanations of emigration are well-documented in previous literature, very few empirical studies systematically explicate the exponentially increasing number of Chinese students studying abroad. My paper addresses this question by using and modifying Truex's (2014) China Policy Attitudes Survey. I argue that economic and political factors (such as satisfaction with the local government), instead of ideological ones, are the principal reasons that empirically explain the puzzle of young emigration in China. I also decompose the political factors in order to accurately capture what specific political factors substantially deter- mine one's decision to study abroad. The implication of the paper is twofold. First, the research sheds light on the relationship between social mobility of the youth and authoritarian regime stability. Furthermore, the findings implicate that developing states should employ economic and political incentives in order to attract overseas talent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Congress established the Patent Cases Pilot Program in 2011 "to encourage enhancement of expertise in patent cases." Essentially, the program allows judges in 14 U.S. District Courts to specialize in patent litigation if they wish to do so. As such, it represents an ongoing natural experiment of sorts on specialization's possible implications for judicial policymaking. In this paper we offer an initial, primarily descriptive account of this ten year pilot program. In that account, we consider the characteristics of those judges who have opted into the program, assess factors that may help explain their self-selection into it, and discuss the program's possible implications for judicial efficiency and policymaking. Once sufficient case data has been accumulated, we plan to supplement the present paper with more refined quantitative analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American politics literature has demonstrated empirically that political knowledge matters. Many poorly informed individuals would vote differently if they were better informed, collective opinions across a broad range of domestic political issues would be different if the public were better informed, and no amount of media attention appears equal to the task of enabling poorly informed individuals to behave as if they were better informed. However, the empirical approach to investigating information effects in domestic politics has yet to be extended to the realm of foreign policy attitudes in a systematic way (with the exception of a few foreign policy questions examined with other domestic issues). This paper adopts the approach used by Bartels (1996), Delli Carpini and Keeter (1996), Althaus (1998, 2003), and Claassen and Highton (2006, 2009) to measure information effects in individual and collective opinion. The individual information effects will reveal for each individual how different their expressed opinion was compared to what their enlightened (hypothetical, fully informed) opinion would have been. Also the estimates will reveal, by aggregating the absolute size of (not direction of) information effects in the public, when political knowledge matters most across a range of American foreign policy issues and over time. By using American National Election Studies data, this paper provides a new answer to questions about citizen competence in the realm of foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]