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 Life Cycle of Issue Spaces(2024) Hightower, Tristan Matthew; Miler, Kristina; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation I explore the dynamics of interest group populations through the development and application of a novel life cycle theory. Building on the work of population ecologists and other interest group scholars, this theory examines the stages of formation, growth, and decline of interest groups within various issue spaces. I conduct empirical analyses across three distinct domains: the agricultural sector with a focus on cranberries, the contentious and ideologically driven area of reproductive rights, and the declining population of banking institutions. These cases illustrate how interest groups navigate their life cycles and influence policy outcomes. Life cycle theory emphasizes the role of density dependence and interspecific competition, providing a comprehensive framework for analyzing the long-term trends and adaptive strategies of interest groups. The analysis of the cranberry lobby demonstrates how group diversity and population density affect policy attention. The analysis of reproductive rights organizations highlights the complex interplay between opposing groups and the significance of group population dynamics in shaping legislative outcomes. Finally, the analysis of the banking sector focuses on how regulatory changes and economic shifts impact the life cycles of financial institutions. My findings underscore the importance of considering group populations in understanding group formation, policy attention, and democratic engagement. I conclude that interest groups are essential components of American democratic processes, providing marginalized communities with avenues for influence amidst overburdened institutions. By offering a framework for analyzing the adaptive strategies and long-term trends of interest groups, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of how interests are advanced and under what conditions they thrive.Item Culture Warriors Go To Court: The Supreme Court and the Battle for the "Soul" of America(2015) Spivey, Michael; McIntosh, Wayne; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: CULTURE WARRIORS GO TO COURT: THE SUPREME COURT AND THE BATTLE FOR THE "SOUL" OF AMERICA Michael O. Spivey, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Dissertation Directed by: Professor Wayne McIntosh Department of Government and Politics The notion of a "culture war" has become a fixture in the academic writing about current American politics, in the popular press and in the cultural zeitgeist. Theorists have suggested that there is a cultural fault line dividing cultural progressives and religious traditionalists. This fault line, it is argued, stems from a basic epistemological disagreement as to whether there is transcendent "truth." According to James Davidson Hunter, these different worldviews lead to policy polarization and cultural warfare. Hunter goes on to suggest that courts (and especially the Supreme Court) are focal points for this conflict. This work analyzes the nature and scope of battles over culture war issues in the United Supreme Court. It relies on a popular description of key culture war issues: God, guns and gays. The Supreme Court's treatment of each of these issues is analyzed in turn. In addition, the Supreme Court's abortion jurisprudence is also examined. With respect to each issue, key Supreme Court cases are identified. The briefs filed by the parties are then summarized and coded, identifying key "modalities" of arguments and specific arguments themselves. All amicus briefs are similarly analyzed and coded. The key Supreme Court decisions are then analyzed in light of arguments raised by parties and amici. Based upon this analysis, it appears that there is not one culture war but rather an interrelated set of cultural battles. Relatedly, there has been an evolution of cultural warfare over time. Some issues have become largely settled (at least within the Court's jurisprudence; others are on their way to being settled and still others present continuing opportunities for cultural clashes. The work concludes by suggesting that the sexual revolution lies at the heart of cultural warfare. Moreover, cultural battles are over the "meaning" of America, that is, what social values will be protected under law.Item LEGAL ARGUMENT, ISSUE FRAMING, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAW ON THE SUPREME COURT(2015) Hensley, Jonathan; McIntosh, Wayne; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Abstract Title of Dissertation: LEGAL ARGUMENT, ISSUE FRAMING, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAW ON THE SUPREME COURT Jonathan B. Hensley, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Dissertation Directed By: Dr. Wayne McIntosh Department of Government and Politics Supreme Court advocates seek to influence the Supreme Court through the arguments made in briefs filed with the Court. This dissertation examines the extent to which language used in attorneys' briefs is adopted by the Supreme Court, and whether the arguments made by attorneys affect the content and outcome of Court decisions. I focus on the Court's campaign finance jurisprudence, as the focus on a particular area of law allows the tracing of language related to similar issues over time. In Chapter Two, I demonstrate that the Court's campaign finance decisions can be divided into four eras that are distinguishable by the Court's relative deference or skepticism toward legislative determinations regarding campaign finance regulation. Chapter Three examines instances in which justices have changed their minds on important issues and searches for evidence that arguments in briefs influenced these changes, but finds that there is little evidence that these changes can be directly attributed to arguments found in briefs. Chapter Four examines legal argument through issue framing, analyzing the issue frames employed in both court opinions and attorney's briefs. I conclude that the four eras of campaign finance law can also be distinguished by differences in issue framing. I further conclude that advocates can affect the way the Court views an issue by adding new frames at the Supreme Court level that were not present in the lower courts, especially in the transitional cases that mark the beginning of a new era.Item Domestic Political Consequences of Interstate Wars(2015) Mukherjee, Bappaditya; Huth, Paul K; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the connection between costs of interstate war and postwar domestic politics of countries that waged them. Previous research focused primarily on explaining the chances of survival of war leaders by factors like outcome of war, culpability and regime type. This project contends that the variation in level of domestic hostility facing postwar governments also needs explanation, independent of the tenure of individual leaders. This can be operationalized by counting political events that make it harder for an incumbent to govern effectively. This is the logical basis for replacing a dichotomous dependent variable (i.e. survival versus removal of a leader) with a combined count of antigovernment activities over a finite postwar period of five years. The study hypothesizes that the higher the cost incurred by a country in a war, the greater the likelihood that it will witness manifestations of antigovernment hostility. The hypotheses were tested using cross-national data from a sample of warring countries from the period, 1919-1999. Countries that suffered civilian fatalities during war, tended to be at greater risk of overt anti-government hostility in the postwar period. As a measure of costliness, battle deaths did not work as a predictor of postwar threats faced by governments of warring states. The quantitative analysis was supplemented by case analysis of two countries - Paraguay after the Chaco War (1932-35) and Egypt after the Six Day War (1967). The Paraguayan case demonstrated how counter-elites can successfully exploit popular discontent caused by the costs of the war to discredit and depose a victorious wartime leader and his coalition. On the other hand, Egypt in the aftermath of the 1967 war illustrates that leader turnover is only one among many possible political consequences of war. A factional struggle within the pre-war winning coalition and popular expressions of antigovernment sentiment are possible without resulting in the removal of a wartime leader. Secondly, it shows why outcome has consistently been a powerful predictor of a war's domestic effects.Item The Smoking Gun: Toward Understanding the Decision Calculus Behind Repressive Outcomes(2015) Munayyer, Yousef; Telhami, Shibley; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Why do states repress? Why are civil liberties curtailed? Explorations of these questions have departed from the assumption that security concerns motivate decisions that lead to repressive outcomes. If the state is challenged, it will repress. A state, it is assumed, must "strike a balance" between security and liberty. But what if those assumptions are flawed? If the decisions behind politically repressive outcomes are not always motivated by security challenges to the state, then we must ask a different set of questions about what can motivate state behavior and repression. This study examines the validity of these assumptions. A survey of cases of repressive episodes in the United States, using both primary and secondary sources, reveals that the decisions behind enacting repressive measures is not as straightforward as these assumptions would have it seem. A unique case, situated both contextually and historically by the preceding survey, is then explored in depth using data that is rarely available to shed a new degree of light on a decision making process. This data is overwhelming primary source information and includes declassified material from a variety of archives, material obtained from Freedom of Information Act Requests, as well as uniquely revelatory audio evidence that has only recently been made publicly available. After reviewing the case I argue that enough evidence exists to suggest the main assumptions of the repression and civil liberties literature fails to encompass all motivating factors behind repressive outcomes and a deeper understanding of how other factors can lead to repressive outcomes is needed.Item Philosopher Kings, Then and Now: The Political Philosophy of IQ(2015) Smith, Brannon Wilson; Glass, James M; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The most fundamental question of political philosophy is “who should rule?” Socrates famously argued in the Republic that philosophers were the most precise guardians of the best city. The question of intelligence is not a theoretical one; it is relevant far beyond the building of cities in speech. The importance we ascribe to measures of intelligence informs a broad range of policy questions and could challenge our democratic processes. This dissertation seeks to understand the relationship of the modern concept of IQ to Western political philosophy by investigating the role of intelligence for Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and contemporary psychometricians. Whereas intelligence has a moral dimension for the classical philosophers, Machiavelli emphasized the use of prudence in the service of ambition. Contemporary psychometrics presents intelligence as a distinct, amoral property. I argue that Freud and group psychology provide insight into the way democracy could relate to a hypothetical cognitive elite. I further suggest ways in which we could make use of the modern IQ test to improve the quality of our political leadership and make use of an important Platonic theory without abandoning representative democracy as we know it.Item Arming Agents or Assailants? A Principal-Agent Approach to Examining US Military Aid and Repression(2015) Cutrufello, Emma; Huth, Paul K; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The United States provides billions of dollars each year in military assistance to foreign nations, yet we know very little about how aid affects recipients. This dissertation considers the impact of military aid on repression. I use a principal-agent framework to examine the strategic interaction between the United States and recipient country and evaluate the conditions under which an agent "works" or "shirks" on human rights policy. The principal-agent theory of military assistance reveals that the extent of U.S. oversight of aid, preference similarities between the principal and agent, the expected costs of being caught and punished for shirking, and the potential payoff to shirking affect the likelihood of repression. I argue that critical explanatory power comes from disaggregating U.S. military aid programs: material aid increases the power of the recipient armed forces and is subject to less U.S. oversight compared to education and targeted funding programs. I test my theory using a quantitative analysis of U.S. military aid to 180 foreign countries from 1991-2011 and two outcome variables, government one-sided violence and scaled physical integrity rights. The results indicate that education and targeted funding reduce the likelihood of one-sided violence. On average, I find that material aid is associated with an increased likelihood of physical integrity abuse in recipient countries. In addition, material aid to full democracies is associated with a lower likelihood of repression, while countries with oil exports are more likely to repress. This study improves upon previous research by theoretically and empirically disaggregating military aid from foreign aid writ large as well as augmenting our understanding of state repression. The project reveals that material aid may undermine other U.S. efforts to promote stability and democratization and that there are opportunities for policy changes to improve U.S. oversight of material assistance.Item A TALE OF TWO MODERNITIES: A LIBERAL ALTERNATIVE TO A LIBERAL MODERNITY FROM VICO TO HAVEL(2014) Otruba, Alexander Peter; Tismaneanu, Vladimir; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The resurgence of the political theory of Marx, Lenin and even Communism itself is increasingly seen in left political theory as the only means of successfully mobilizing the "energy and rage" of the people against capitalism in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse. It also threatens to draw politics and political theory back into the dangerous territory of twentieth-century illusions. This dissertation--taking its cue from Jeffrey Isaac's 1995 article in DISSENT condemning the "strange silence of political theory" regarding the revolutions of 1989--looks to introduce the political thought of 1989 into contemporary left political theory. The work of Leszek Kolakowski, Adam Michnik, Vaclav Havel and Gyorgy Konrad are representative of a political theory that consciously works to avoid the ideological traps and illusions packaged within modernity's displacement of the authority of the natural world with the Cartesian promise to be able to both know, order, and modify that world. This dissertation places the east and central European dissident theorists of 1989 in conversation with Giambattista Vico--who in his oration On method in contemporary fields of study (1710) recognized the presence of this tension that would undergird modernity--and the Italian antifascist theorists Benedetto Croce, Piero Gobetti and Antonio Gramsci, whom he would later inspire. Through their similar confrontations with modern totalitarian states, both the Italian antifascist theorists and the theorists of 1989 identified within modernity a rupture between "truth", concrete reality, and humanity itself. A rupture that produced regimes and politics that promised humanity's emancipation from absolutism, while normalizing its subjugation in new and increasingly sophisticated ways. Their revised theoretical approach to modernity sets aside the ideological illusions of the twentieth-century in a compelling manner, and instead offer a principled foundation for the active preservation of democracy and human autonomy. Read collectively they represent more just a critique, but also a sophisticated set of political ideas that answer those who would otherwise approach them as naïve revolutionists or even defenders of the status quo.Item Bureaucratic Discretion: Citizen Officials and the Choice to Resist(2014) Hoffman, Christopher Andrew; Alford, C. F.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the realm of political theory, absolutism has largely dictated the conception of bureaucratic duty. Thus the ideal has seen bureaucrats as bound to obey the dictates of the sovereign, usually seen as the body that makes law. Empirical approaches to public administration have, quite naturally, pointed out that human beings, even bureaucrats, do not merely follow orders. Yet, even if one adopts an approach that sees the problem in terms of principle and agent, the concern remains of ensuring that the sovereign controls the official. I argue that this perspective has overshadowed the republican tradition, which saw magistrates as citizens first. In other words, there is a long tradition in political theory that offers scope for officials to exercise discretion on behalf of their political communities through acts of positive resistance. Mere passivity in the form of resignation or non-compliance is sometimes insufficient. A republican conception of magistrates has long afforded these officials the capacity to act on how they see things. The need for an emphasis on this approach increases as the political community itself becomes increasingly incapable through lack of knowledge or information of acting in its own interests. In fact, it sometimes happens that officials alone possess the knowledge necessary to take action on behalf of the community. The republican tradition provides a basis for rationalizing this in theoretical terms once we accept that all officials today are both citizens and magistrates in the traditional sense.Item BUREAUCRAT POLITICKING: AN EXAMINATION OF LOCAL HEALTH OFFICIALS AND THEIR LOCAL HEALTH DEPARTMENTS(2014) Elligers, Julia Joh; Morris, Irwin; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Based on a model of bureaucrat politicking, this study investigates how local health officials, as political actors, secure financial resources to ensure their local health departments can meet the needs of their constituents. The model draws from theories of bureaucracies, public administration, and community power and describes administrating, advocating, co-learning, and politicking behaviors bureaucrats employ as leaders of local government agencies. The model of bureaucrat politicking generates a series of hypotheses that describe how bureaucrat behavior can affect elected official budget appropriations. I hypothesize that politicking will result in more resources for bureaucrats than administrating, advocating, or co-learning. Secondarily, I hypothesize that co-learning will result in more resources than advocating or administrating. Co-learning is predicted to have a greater affect than advocating because a bureaucrat will be leveraging electoral pressures via constituent engagement. In addition, administrating behavior will result in the fewest resources of the four behavior types. I examine the behaviors of local health officials to uncover how the model of bureaucrat politicking plays out in practice. Results from in-depth interviews with ten local health officials from around the country illustrate how local bureaucrats demonstrate administrating, advocating, co-learning, and politicking behaviors. Ordinary least square regression analyses using survey data mainly from the National Association of County and City Health Officials' National Profile of Local Health Departments study support my hypotheses.