Political Science

Book Five of Rousseau's Emile treats the same three themes, in the same order, as Book Five of Plato's Republic, and so can rightly be seen as a response to it. The response appears at first to be largely negative, for Rousseau emphatically rejects the political proposals made by Socrates.

The way in which international treaties influence state level policies has been widely debated in both the policy and international relations fields. I weigh in on this subject by examining the effects of ratifying the Convention to End Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) on women's domestic citizenship status. Specifically, in my project, I evaluate the relationship between CEDAW ratification and family law policies-a proxy for women's citizenship status, to show the mechanisms whereby the international treaty elicits state level policy change. I use a large-N analysis to determine the generalizability of my theory, and juxtapose this with a case study of Jordan to illustrate the causal mechanisms involved in the policy change process. I argue that international treaties instigate domestic policy change by influencing domestic legal processes, altering national policy agendas, and legitimizing political mobilization. In conclusion, this project, by closely examining these causal mechanisms, sheds new light on the rarely acknowledged issue of CEDAW ratification on women's civil, political, and social citizenship status.

Income inequality, a problem that vexes free marketers and welfare-statists, alike, is a problem that features both political and economic components.  This analysis attempts to discern to what extent income inequality results from an amalgamation of economic and political variables.  It determines through regression analysis that partisan control of government resources results in statistically significant differences in both the performance of the economy, as measured by the change in GDP from year to year, and the measure of inequality within the nation, as determined by the GINI coefficient.

This paper attempts to understand the political forces behind economic development in Chicago during Mayor Richard M. Daley’s tenure in office (1989-2011).  It explores whether or not the city pursued gentrifying policies, defined as development centered on cultivation of cultural amenities.  Through case studies of Chicago’s planning documents and the development of Millennium Park, the political forces of economic development repudiate the dominance of the urban growth machine of urban political economy as the sole method of economic revitalization.  An extensive hedonic analysis of housing properties, sold between 1991 and 2011, serves as a barometer of economic development, and allows this paper to appraise the effectiveness of Mayor Daley’s policies through gauging the consumer’s willingness to pay for proximity to cultural amenities in Chicago.

Education matters and the disparity correlated with different levels of education attainment is what make education matter.  This paper describes the different approaches to curbing this achievement gap through United States education policy. It argues that increasing human capital by expanding access to higher education through increasing funding for grants and supplementary educational programs provide robust alternatives to domestic education policy. This paper uses as case studies the Pell Grant and Head Start programs.

“Settler colonialism” presents a vexing challenge to voting rights theory and praxis in liberal-democratic states. I call this challenge “Kymlicka’s dilemma,” after Will Kymlicka, the political theorist who has led contemporary discourse on “minority nation” rights. As Kymlicka observed, members of a state’s dominant cultural nation, or staatsvolk, may, by exercising universal mobility rights, numerically “swamp,” and then, by using universal voting rights, democratically dominate, an Indigenous minority nation in its homeland. To prevent this, an Indigenous minority nation may seek to exercise group-based voting protections, such as guaranteed representation. Where “Kymlicka’s dilemma” arises – i.e., where minority group-differentiated voting protections challenge the voting powers of individual staatsvolk and vice versa – a constitutional conflict seems certain. In Canada’s Northwest Territories, from at least the 1970s until the separation of Nunavut in 1999, the specter of “Kymlicka’s dilemma” (mis)shaped the constitutional evolution of the territorial government. There, in what was long Canada’s last Indigenous-majority jurisdiction, decades of Indigenous political resistance to settler control hinged on the permissibility of Indigenous overrepresentation in the territorial legislature. In the 1990s, three developments portended changes to Indigenous overrepresentation in that legislature: Charter of Rights-inspired limits on electoral-district malapportionment, constitutional recognition of Indigenous group-based protections, and the amplified danger of settler “swamping” that would result from Nunavut’s separation. As if in a natural experiment, these developments created conditions for a potentially volatile constitutional conflict. This thesis analyzes the results of that experiment. It shows that a constitutional conflict did ensue, catalyzed by the territorial electoral reapportionment of 1998-99. This conflict involved a yearlong political clash over Indigenous versus individual rights. This thesis further shows that a controversial court ruling, and equally controversial political decisions, resolved this conflict, deciding “Kymlicka’s dilemma” by rejecting Indigenous group-differentiated voting protections in the territorial legislature.

On the basis of a series of interviews conducted throughout the summer of 2014, I investigate the politics and consequences of sectarian stacking in the Syrian military as well as the root causes of Sunni officers grievances and alienation. My conclusions draw on an original database that compiles the sectarian affiliations of 81 prominent officers
who occupied the most senior military positions under Bashar al-Assad.

Why do coups happen in some nascent democracies but not in others? To answer this question, I probe four interconnected variables in democratizing regimes: the military's ethos; the military's corporate interests; the military's perception of the new civilian ruling elite; and the correlation of force between the military and the founding democratic government. My argument is twofold: first, I maintain that ideational variables are central to shaping the military's political behaviour; and second, I argue in favour of merging insights from cultural, corporate, and structural theories to understand the consolidation, or breakdown, of nascent democracies.

This essay uses a modified version of the Social-Ecological Systems framework to elucidate and interpret the complex political, ecological and social systems that comprise the use of genetic engineering in food production in the United States. Building from an understanding that actor support and participation is critical to the success of any system of resource governance, the essay first performs an analysis of the action situation of GE plants and foods, using California Proposition 37 as a case study. Then, the essay assesses the results of an exploratory questionnaire distributed to actor-consumers in Northfield, MN and East Aurora, NY, to determine how actor-consumers in the United States form their opinions of, and act toward, GEOs. The work evaluates how carefully the governance structures and discourse around GE crops and foods reflect actor-consumer attitudes and knowledge. Although public discourse preceding the vote on mandatory labeling initiatives like Proposition 37 can be polarized, this analysis finds that actor-consumer opinions on GEOs in the U.S. are moderate, and that they differ with demographic changes in gender, scientific knowledge, perceived information, trust in the federal government and religiosity. The analysis finds that actor-consumer views and knowledge are inadequately integrated into GE governance, even in action situations where actor-consumers are given the democratic opportunity to vote on specific governance protocols. The essay concludes that the failure to integrate actor-consumer understanding originates in a definition and boundary problem that obstructs the efficacy of local knowledge in the system.

Contrary to our understanding of when states are likely to act on women's rights, Jordan adopted a policy on violence against women at the same time that it faced both external and internal security threats. This paper explores why this occurred by developing a new theory on militarism and the gender policymaking process, and then testing this theory on a case study of Jordan. I argue that militarism affects state action on violence against women in three ways: 1) militarism affects the policy agenda, raising the profile of women's rights that bolster the state's defense interests, 2) it affects whether governmental elites and the polity will accept feminist policy initiatives, and 3) it influences the tactics and strategies of domestic women's movements. The case study uses process tracing and includes primary data collected during sixteen months of fieldwork in Jordan. I find that the Jordanian government adopted the violence against women policy because it enhanced the state's image in the international arena and appeased domestic audiences by adhering to a gendered logic of protection that maintains the state as the ultimate protector of women. Overall, the paper deepens our understanding of how militarism and the security climate can influence the gender policymaking process, particularly in semi-authoritarian regimes.

Canada, like all representative democracies, apportions representation to individuals; also, like all federal states, it accords polity-based representation to federal subunits. But Canada is additionally a consociational state, comprising three constitutionally recognized “national groups” – anglophones, francophones and Indigenous peoples. These groups share power and bear rights beyond the bounds of the federal system. In recent decades, Indigenous peoples and francophones have appealed for representation qua “national group,” leading to constitutional challenges. Courts have either failed to address the constitutionality of “national group” representation or have rejected it as irreconcilable with individual voting rights. I suggest the former is unnecessary and the latter procedurally illogical. Drawing on the liberal principles of individualism, egalitarianism and universalism, I develop a framework contextualizing such representation within liberal theory. I then deploy this framework to analyze recent Canadian case law. I show that appeals for “national group” representation should be approached not through the lens of individual rights, but rather through the “constitutionally prior” lens of universalism. In this way, they may be more logically resolved.

In this article, we evaluate gender differences in COVID-19 conspiracy theory beliefs. We find that women are significantly less likely than men to endorse COVID-19 conspiracy theories and that this gender difference cuts across party lines. Our analysis suggests that this gender gap is partially explained by two dispositional factors: learned helplessness and conspiratorial thinking. Our findings qualify past work on the antecedents of conspiracy theory beliefs, which does not uncover robust and significant gender differences. The results highlight the need for work in this area to better theorize about the significance of gender.

In this article, we evaluate gender differences in COVID-19 conspiracy theory beliefs. We find that women are significantly less likely than men to endorse COVID-19 conspiracy theories and that this gender difference cuts across party lines. Our analysis suggests that this gender gap is partially explained by two dispositional factors: learned helplessness and conspiratorial thinking. Our findings qualify past work on the antecedents of conspiracy theory beliefs, which does not uncover robust and significant gender differences. The results highlight the need for work in this area to better theorize about the significance of gender.

This dissertation is the culmination of six years of fortitude and long, hard work. However, none of it would have been possible if not for the support, mentorship, or guidance of several people along the way. First and foremost, Jennifer Wolak is someone to whom I owe a tremendous debt, as an advisor, a teacher, and a role model for the kind of social scientist I could only aspire to be. She has dedicated a considerable amount of energy reading multiple drafts of every manuscript I have ever written, offering copious feedback, guidance, and criticism whenever necessary; provided me wonderful methodological training in the classroom; and offered more than her fair share of excellent life advice and emotional support. I'd also like to thank Anand Sokhey, Ken Bickers, Jeff Harden, and Jennifer Fitzgerald. They all offered thoughtful comments and feedback on various aspects of this dissertation, and they have all informed my thinking about both politics and political science as a discipline. Scott Adler also deserve recognition for being a constant presence throughout my graduate training, both as a teacher and as someone who has offered me numerous professional opportunities. Lastly, I'd like to thank Leaf Van Boven for serving on my dissertation committee and offering a fresh set of eyes and thoughtful comments. Numerous other people have been critical for the success of both this dissertation and my overall development as a political scientist, including Jim Pripusich,