College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item The Republic and its Problems: Alexander Hamilton and James Madison on the 18th Century Critique of Republics(2009) Evans, Michael Clinton; McIntosh, Wayne V.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study offers a new interpretation of the theoretical basis of the political alliance and rupture between Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. The central thesis is that Madison was correct that his and Hamilton's disagreement was rooted in their different orientations toward republican versus monarchical governments. Although for the past century scholars have rejected Madison's claim that Hamilton harbored monarchical principles and intentions, this study argues that the textual record suggests that he did. More specifically, it is demonstrated that there is no evidence that Hamilton had a genuine principled commitment to republican government. Moreover, the evidence does indicate that he always believed America would be better served by emulating the British mixed regime, complete with a hereditary monarch, and that he sought to put the United States on a developmental path toward such a regime. This difference between Hamilton and Madison was based on both disparate political principles and differences in their prudential judgments about the possibility that the Americans could overcome what this study calls the "18th century critique of republics." This powerful tenet of Enlightenment political science claimed that two sociopolitical processes tended to transform republics into despotic or, at best, limited monarchical regimes. One of these processes, "the republican violent death," was thought to naturally lead republics into anarchy and eventually monarchy or despotism. The other process, "the republican security dilemma," consisted of several pressures placed on regimes by their external security environment to adopt policies and establish institutions that undermined the domestic requisites for republican liberty. The most salient implication of the 18th century critique of republics was that the British balanced constitution presented the best model for durable liberty under modern conditions. This study argues that Madison and Hamilton were united in taking this critique seriously and that they both believed the two processes could have led to despotic regimes throughout North America if something had not been done to curb what they perceived as the excessive democracy and sovereign pretensions of the State governments. Their principal prudential difference was that Madison, unlike Hamilton, believed he had found republican cures for these republican diseases.Item HISTORICAL AND COMPUTATIONAL ANALYSIS OF LONG-TERM ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE: FORESTS IN THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY OF VIRGINIA(2005-08-01) Wilson, James W.; Geores, Martha E; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The increase and decrease of forests is a major factor of land cover change. This study of forest change in the Shenandoah Valley builds upon the rich historiography of the region through the analysis of generalized and spatially explicit primary and secondary sources covering the period of 1700 to 2000. Combining geo-historical and geo-computational approaches produced a more robust picture of land cover change than would be possible using only one method. Comparing modern and historical reports on the timing of forest clearance and re-growth revealed that a discrepancy existed between the spatially explicit sources and existing historical interpretations regarding the timing and location of forest clearance and re-growth. Understanding this discrepancy is important for the interpretation of forest change and its implications in the Shenandoah Valley and beyond. Two main aspects of the study are the thorough interrogation and comparison of different data sources, and the subsequent analysis and interpretation of the data. Historic maps (1864, 1906, and c. 1945) and digital data sets derived from remotely sensed images (c. 1974 and c. 1992) were analyzed in a geographic information system (GIS) and compared to agricultural census data and published reports of land use and land cover change. Three major findings came out of this study. First, the spatially explicit sources produced values for the amount of cleared area that were within 0.5 to 2.7% of the same information derived from the agricultural census. Second, the maximum amount of forest clearance occurred 25 - 50 years later than existing published reports indicated. Third, the commonly held explanations of federal land acquisition and the abandonment of farms on steep slopes did not account for the observed patterns of forest re-growth. The documented variations in spatial and temporal patterns and reasons for the variations have impacts on our understanding of cultural and physical processes that took place in the region.Item PARTY WITH THE COURT: POLITICAL PARTIES AND THE NATIONAL JUDICIARY IN THE CREATION, MAINTENANCE, AND TRANSFORMATION OF POLITICAL ORDERS(2005-07-26) Hays, Bradley David; Graber, Mark A.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the United States, the national judiciary plays a vital role in the creation, maintenance, and transformation of political orders. Political parties, the institutions primarily responsible for the operation of a political order, tend to be large and heterogeneous. This heterogeneity creates disjunction within the party and threatens to undermine partisan unity. In order to hold power over an extended period of time, parties-in-power must diffuse their intra-party tension. This dissertation explores the phenomena of parties using courts to diffuse intra-party tension by displacing highly divisive issues onto the national judiciary. This exploration reveals a pattern whereby the dominant wing of the party-in-power consistently secures its preferences through the courts to the detriment of minority wing preferences. To elucidate this pattern, three different political orders are examined. First, the Republican political order is examined to reveal how the dominant, conservative wing of the Party used the courts to protect against invasive regulatory schemes favored by the progressive, minority wing of the Party. Second, an examination of the New Deal/Great Society Democratic political order reveals the role the courts played in enabling the liberal, dominant wing of the Party to circumvent conservative, minority wing obstruction of civil rights and how the courts helped liberal Democrats woo African American voters so as to transform and liberalize the Democratic Party. Third, the period of divided government is detailed to reveal how the dominant, economically conservative wing of the Republican Party uses the Supreme Court to manage issues highly salient to the socially conservative minority wing. Judicial administration of religion in education, homosexual rights, and abortion resulted in the Republican Party eschewing those issues from its legislative agenda and, simultaneously, resulted in center-left policy consistent with dominant wing preferences. By judicializing social issues, the Republican Party created greater Party unity than what would otherwise be possible, which enabled it to rise to power at the turn of the 21st Century. The party-court dynamic has implications for judicial power, party government, and constitutional theory and each are explored in the conclusion.Item The Presentation of Slavery at Mount Vernon: Power Priviledge, and Historical Truth(2005-06-22) McGill, Keeley; Moghadam, Linda; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Although the labor of enslaved Africans and Black Americans played a large part in the history of colonial America, the presentation of slavery at George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens is, for the most part, incomplete and leaves visitors with an inaccurate impression of the reality of slavery. This research utilizes questionnaires completed by visitors on-site and field observations of various historical interpretations at Mount Vernon to answer two major research questions: (1) How is slavery portrayed at Mount Vernon? and (2) To what degree are visitors critical of the story of slavery told at Mount Vernon? The results indicated that the presentation of slavery is inconsistent and that the history of slaves at Mount Vernon is marginalized and easily avoided by most visitors.Item Military Innovation and the American Revolution in Military Affairs(2004-04-30) Tomes, Robert R.; Quester, George; Government and PoliticsTwo objectives motive this study: relating key aspects of an intrinsically important military innovation period of interest to students of U.S. defense transformation and proposing an innovation framework to facilitate additional military innovation studies. The innovation period spans 1973 through 1986. A military innovation framework is proposed to help students of military change assess contextual and organizational factors influencing the ripeness of an innovation milieu.