UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Mobilized Interests: How Interest Groups Influence Member Perceptions of Politics(2024) Meli, Amy D; Miler, Kristina; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this project, I investigate how interest group mobilizations influence their members’ perceptions of government and politics. I theorize that some groups – especially issue advocacy nonprofits whose issues have been incorporated into the Democratic or Republican party platforms – use partisan strategies focused on electing the leaders who can help them move their policy agendas in Congress. Other groups, especially trade and professional associations, choose not to affiliate with a pollical party and instead build relationships with policymakers on both sides of the aisle so that they can move their policy agendas regardless of who is in office. I find that these two different policy strategies lead interest groups to communicate differently with their members, with partisan groups and issue advocacy nonprofits using more partisan and conflict-oriented language, while nonpartisan groups and associations use more pragmatic language. I find that these messages have effects on the people who read them. In a survey experiment, I find that independents and weak partisans who read pragmatic and bipartisan messages have warmer feelings towards the other party, while strong partisans have warmer feelings towards the other party when they hear partisan messaging. Notably, I find that these different approaches lead to varying effects on interest group members, including differences in levels of affective polarization and political efficacy. As professionals join their professional society and get more involved in their association’s activities, they have more trust in government, higher levels of internal and external efficacy, and warmer feelings towards those in the out party. Through interview research, I find that members are influenced by a number of factors, including the public policy training they receive from their interest groups, interactions they have with members of Congress and others in the political system, and messages members receive about how groups use bipartisan strategies to accomplish member goals. All of these stimuli are contributing factors to these effects.Item Intersectional Stereotyping in Political Campaigns(2019) Hicks, Heather Mary; Banks, Antoine J.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Political scientists have debated whether gender stereotypes influence support for women candidates. Similarly, scholars have examined how racism among whites affects evaluations of minority candidates. Yet, rarely have political scientists considered how racism and gender bias intersect when a female minority candidate runs for office. In this dissertation, I propose a theory of intersectional stereotyping, which argues that evaluations of black women candidates are influenced by unique stereotypes based on the intersection of race and gender. Specifically, I argue that stereotypes associating black women with agentic traits (such as assertiveness, dominance, and anger) put black women at a disadvantage when they run for elected office. I hypothesize that members of racial or gender out-groups will penalize black women candidates when they receive campaign information consistent with these agentic stereotypes. On the other hand, I expect that black women will reward an agentic black female candidate because these traits suggest that the candidate is willing and able to stand up for the interests of black women. I test these expectations using a content analysis and two national survey experiments (one using a sample of whites and the other using a sample of blacks). In my content analysis of the 2018 Democratic primary for governor of Georgia, I find that Stacey Abrams, the black female candidate, was more likely to be described with agentic traits, especially negative agentic traits, in newspaper coverage than Stacey Evans, her white female opponent. My experimental data demonstrates that this media coverage of agentic traits puts black women at a disadvantage among white voters. White voters are more likely to penalize a black female candidate for acting in an assertive manner than identical white female and black male candidates. However, I find no penalty or reward for the assertive black female candidate among black voters. This research underscores the importance of studying the influence of race and gender in politics simultaneously. We cannot fully understand the effects of race and gender on support for minority women candidates by studying these concepts in isolation from one another.Item The Unique Political Attitudes and Behaviors of Individuals in Aged Communities(2012) Bramlett, Brittany H.; Gimpel, James G; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the political attitudes and behaviors of individuals residing in communities with large proportions of older adults. These types of locations are growing in number in the United States as the Baby Boomer Generation arrives at retirement age. Many scholars and journalists rely on theories of `senior power' and predict that the places with large numbers of senior citizens should be especially politically powerful. However, many studies have provided little evidence to support these claims. I explore the old questions with updated data, methods and approaches--theorizing that older adults living among their elderly peers will, in fact, exhibit unique levels of political knowledge, efficacy, and participation as well as hold distinct attitudes for safety net issues. Using large-scale surveys and multilevel modeling techniques, I find that older adults residing in aged communities display higher levels of political knowledge than their elderly peers living in places without the same aged context. However, they are less politically efficacious and somewhat less likely to vote. Older adults living among their peers are also more likely to support social welfare programs, controlling for party identification. I also examine the contextual effect of the aged context for younger residents. In particular, I find that young people are also quite supportive of the safety net policies, which provide assistance for their elder neighbors. Because of this support from the younger generation, older adults in aged communities may rarely, if ever, face threats to their livelihood, driving them into political action. Taken together, the results from this dissertation show that older adults living amongst their peers are certainly equipped for intense political engagement or senior power--but they choose political retreatism rather than activism.