College of Behavioral & Social Sciences

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    Follow the Leaders: Policy Presentation in the U.S. Congress
    (2022) Gaynor, SoRelle Wyckoff; Miler, Kristina; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation presents a theory of policy presentation in the U.S. Congress. I define policy presentation as the strategic development and distribution of partisan information to explain major legislative decisions by congressional leaders. Today, rank-and-file members, increasingly removed from the legislative process, rely on guidance from congressional leaders to discuss major legislative decisions with their constituents. As a result, preparing constituent communication materials has become an institutionalized responsibility for party and committee leaders, particularly for House Republicans. I also argue that policy presentation is an undocumented source of partisan polarization, as it incentivizes a partisan presentation of legislative activity—even in cases of bipartisanship and compromise. Using interviews with members of Congress and staff, computational text analysis, and social network analysis, I demonstrate how congressional leaders develop and distribute partisan messages for constituent use. I also document the conditions under which policy presentation occurs, and the members most likely to rely on party and committee leaders for assistance with constituent communication.
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    Emancipation from Doublethink? Post-Soviet Political Parties and Leadership
    (2013) Voitsekhovsky, Peter; Tismaneanu, Vladimir; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This study examines the phenomenon of doublethink as a core feature of the "mental software" that continues to define the character of post-Soviet societies. It is revealed in patterns of prevarication and equivocation that characterize the thinking and behavior of both the elites and the masses. Doublethink is also manifested in incongruous values and duplicitous rules that prevail in society. It accounts for the perpetuation of simulative and fake institutions of "façade democracy." Political parties in post-Soviet Ukraine are analyzed as a major example of simulative and imitative institutions. Here, traditional ideology-based party taxonomies prove misleading. Political parties are quasi-virtual entities with the character of "post-Orwellian political machines": they operate in a topsy-turvy world of imitated supply and deluded demand. The study employs three levels of analysis: macro (surveys data and "Tocquevillean" observations); meso (biographical data and political discourse analysis); and micro (in-depth interviews).
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    The Internet and Political Organizations: Force, Tool, or Wildcard?
    (2007-11-26) Wedig, Timothy; Wilson, Ernest J; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The effect of Internet usage on political organizations is largely assumed in the literature, which limits our understanding of the topic. Three dominant perspectives have developed, viewing technology alternately as a Force that transforms organizations (Techno-determinist), a Tool that organizations can utilize (Situationalist), or as a Wildcard that will have unpredictable effects even on similar organizations (Techno-skeptic). This dissertation examines each of these perspectives in detail and tests their predictive elements against case studies of four political organizations: the Dean for America campaign, MoveOn.org, and the Green and Reform Parties. Cases were chosen due to their innovative usage of the Internet, their outsider status, their status as contemporaries, and being active at the national level of American politics. The results demonstrate that while each perspective provides some insight, they are individually inadequate to explain the subject in its entirety and, therefore, a new approach to the topic is necessary. Suggestions for future research and steps to construct a new, more complete, model are presented along with recommendations for the application of these findings by political organizations.
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    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.