Department of Government
As one of the liberal arts, Government - also called political science - teaches students how to think and communicate about politics. A Government major can dissect and evaluate actual or proposed courses of political action by analyzing the evidence for and against them, setting them in historical and comparative perspective, and relating them to ends that are prized or feared.
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The paradox of militarization: democratic oversight and military autonomy in Mexico and Colombia
(2018-08-17)Throughout Latin America, leaders facing persistent internal security threats have expanded military deployments. In such circumstances, civilian policymakers place an important political bet on military compliance and ... -
The impact of public participation in constitution making
(2018-10-09)Public participation has long been an important element of constitution-making processes. It increasingly takes place early in the process, ostensibly offering citizens an opportunity to contribute directly to the text of ... -
Revival, reform, and reason in Islam : Alfarabi on the proper relationship between religion and politics
(2018-10-09)This dissertation applies the teachings of Alfarabi to the debate between Muslim revivalists and reformists. Reviewing selected works of Khomeini, Maududi, and Qutb, I argue that Islamist revivalism constitutes a fundamental ... -
Responsiveness and feedback under authoritarianism : the public, city governments, and air pollution in China
(2018-09-11)Recent scholarship on authoritarian responsiveness has found limited, ad hoc responsiveness to public concern by local governments in China. However, almost nothing is known about the outcomes of this responsiveness. We ... -
Power in text : extracting institutional relationships from natural language
(2018-09-14)How do legislators allocate policy-making authority? At least in the legal context, distribution-of-power arrangements are usually articulated in written documents. Unfortunately, extracting these relationships is difficult, ... -
The roots of legislative durability : how information, deliberation, and compromise create laws that last
The central question of this dissertation is “What makes law last?” I argue that when legislators seek out diverse sources of information, engage in deliberation, and reach a substantive compromise, they pass the most ... -
The politics of prioritization
Political agenda-setting research primarily studies how political institutions direct policy attention and gives little consideration to individual decision-making (Baumgartner and Jones 2009; Kingdon 1995; Baumgartner et ... -
Machiavelli’s military virtue : lessons from a 16th century political theorist
(2018-05-04)In recent years, civil-military relations experts have identified growing strains on civil-military relations within the United States. They view as problematic the growing cultural divide between the public and a professional ... -
The politics of the people of God : how religious identity and threat structure political attitudes
This dissertation examines how religious group identity and the perception of threat toward one’s religious group affect political attitudes. Drawing on social identity theory, it argues that religion is a meaningful social ... -
Prioritizer-in-chief : the role of the president in the policy process from Reagan to Obama
(2018-04-23)This dissertation sets out a fresh approach to understanding presidential decision-making by connecting the presidency to information processing theories. This approach to behavioral choice highlights how the structure of ... -
Securing guarantees : how nuclear proliferation can strengthen great power commitments
(2018-05-04)The number of states with nuclear weapons has grown at a much slower rate than many predicted during the early years of the Cold War. Yet the reasons for this slow rate of proliferation are not well understood. What is ... -
Campaign funding strategies : how political parties and private donors choose which legislators to invest in
(2018-05-02)This paper employs a series of hierarchical Bayesian regression models to contribute to the academic discourse on the funding strategies that political parties and private donors employ when deciding which political campaigns ... -
Marching orders? : U.S. party platforms and legislative agenda setting 1948-2014
What is the relationship between the priorities expressed in party platforms before an election and the subsequent legislative agenda? The agenda setting literature often deemphasizes the role of political parties in agenda ... -
A just peace : Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and the moral basis of American foreign policy
(2018-05-07)This dissertation attempts to demonstrate the relevance and significance of American presidents' moral arguments to their foreign policy decisions. An interpretive approach that treats as important what presidents say is ... -
Tocqueville the nationalist : reassessing federalism in Democracy in America
(2015-12-03)Some read Alexis de Tocqueville as a great proponent of federalism. However, Tocqueville’s account of federalism in Democracy in America is complicated and multifaceted. He discusses the advantages of administrative ... -
Information and risk : how investor-state disputes affect global policy diffusion
(2017-12-04)I propose an informational mechanism to explain how multinational corporations (MNCs) use Investor-State disputes to slow down the global spread of costly regulations to their businesses. I rely on a multi-methods strategy ... -
Keeping your friends close : how the House Freedom Caucus organized for survival
(2017-11-01)Polarization of the two parties in the U.S. House is clear, but the intraparty homogeneity required for different theories of party government has faded. Party leaders have responded to this new factional insurgence with ... -
A moral psychological primary source analysis of Brown v. Board of Education
(2017-12-06)This work applies the social intuitionist psychological model of moral judgment to explain the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision-making process. Based on an examination of the available Brown ... -
The young American voter in the new millennium
(2017-08-09)A puzzling age gap in vote choice appeared between young and older Americans between the 2004 and the 2012 presidential elections in the United States. This dissertation seeks to explain the emergence and persistence of ... -
Vote choice in the presence of targeted benefit transfers : unpacking the voter’s decision-making process
(2017-08-08)In many developing democracies, political campaigns distribute cash and other goods to voters prior to elections in order to mobilize support. This study examines how receiving targeted benefits from political campaigns ...
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